I can't even count how many subways we were on today! Brian has done an AMAZING job of navigating all of our travels through this city- he has a knack for it, thanks perhaps, to all of the Air Force training.
We started the day by heading downtown to the central Tokyo train station to purchase train tickets to go to Kyoto for the day on Thursday- I'm not even going to tell you how much it cost! Amtrack where we live is subsidized.... that's obvious. Anyway, the bullet train will be super cool. We will leave that train station around 7:00 am, be thinking of us!
After purchasing the trian tickets, we walked over to the Imperial Palace gardens to walk around for a while. We were fortunate enough to catch a special exhibit of artifacts from the Royal Family- which was beautiful and fascinating. The grounds were extensive and contained many enormous stone walls, moats, koi ponds, stauary, lawns and guard houses. I have attached a couple of pictures from these gardens.
It was pretty darn humid today- we both really felt it. We were very very hungry when we left the gardens, and decided to see if we could have lunch in a "mall" that we'd walked past on the way to the gardens. We went directly to the top floor of the 5 story building and chose from about 25 different restaurants for lunch. I'll admit, the one we chose had a sign offering an English language menu... which had great appeal. It will be hard to top the lunch we had today. It was wonderful. We had Katsu chicken and pork loin, along with a delightful salad, pickles, rice, miso soup and iced green tea. The salad was my favorite part... it was the most delicious thing I've eaten in a week.
After lunch, we walked around in this mall. I have never seen such an appealing selection of merchandise in my life! I could have spent tons on money and time... but I was good. I did buy a couple of gifts and a small balsa wood squirell to go on Ivy's shelf in her room. It is precious. We think we might go back to this mall next week with Ivy just to walk around.
We next wanted to head to a baby store we'd heard about in another part of town. It required a few different subway trains to get to- and then our map didn't make sense to us... so we hopped in a taxi to get there. It was the best 710 yen I've ever spent! The baby store was comprehensive... we wandered through it and bought some diapers (!!!!) and two tiny kimono outfits for Ivy, as well as some more wipes- we hear you can't have too many of those.
On the way back to the subway, we stopped for a coffee (or tea) at Tully's coffee and then lots more subways. We got a little lost a couple of times, and two very kind Tokyo residents helped us out a lot! We owe them big, especially the gentleman that realized he had steered us wrong, and hopped on our train to correct his directions, even making himself late for an appointment.
Speaking of kindness, I wanted to mention the kindness of our flight attendant on the NW 27, Sharon, who aside from taking wonderful care of us on our journey to Japan, also made a gift of a delicious bottle of champagne to us to celebrate Ivy! Thanks!!!!
Ok, so that's about it for today. We are going to have a snack for dinner and veg.
Tomorow's update will be after we get back from Kyoto.
As we were drinking coffee this afternoon, I realized that we really only have 2.5 days left!!! A long, 9+ year wait comes down to this. Un be lieve a ble.
I assume that you went to Akachan Hompo - isn't it amazing? I think I told you the formula is cheaper there too....I'm sure you'll be back after you get Ivy and see that you need "some" thing?!
ReplyDeleteLooks like you two are taking in the sights, have a wonderful day in Kyoto, can't wait for the 2 1/2 days to get here too!
Funny how the last 2.5 days probably feel like more of an eternity because you know she is just there waiting for you! How wonderful :) I can't wait to see pics of you with her finally in your arms!
ReplyDeleteAlso can't wait to hear about Kyoto!