Tokyo - Day 3 - Day of the Ninja + Walking Tours
Today we woke up early again. This made it easy to get our money's worth from our 1000円 all-you-can-ride subway passes.
After a quick breakfast of breakfast burgers at a burger joint Lotteria in the subway station, we started the day with our second attempt at the East Shinjuku walking tour. It was fun to wander around during rush hour, but sadly nothing was open other than a couple hollow buildings. Nothing seems to open until about 10:00am. We may have to return to check out the high tech toilet showroom.
After we finished with Shinjuku, we headed on over to Harajuku for another walking tour. It wasn't Sunday so there were no eccentric teens to gape at, but we did get a taste of the culture. It's an odd dichotomy kind of like Sausalito except with more interesting architecture. There was a mix of upper class huge spenders shopping at pretentious stores (most of them US and EU brands) combined with the poorer youth that rebel through atypical fashion. It kind of makes sense too since most Tokyoites seem to spend just about their entire lives in a uniform of some kind: from the navy uniforms of elementary and high school to their dark business suits of adulthood.
With this tour completed, we grabbed some baked goods and headed off to the peaceful nearby park of the Meiji Jingu Shrine. We found a snack counter and supplemented our baked goods with some takoyaki. Once full, we explored the shrine for a few minutes before heading back to the train station for our dinner reservations at Ninja Akasaka.
Ninja Akasaka was quite campy, but very fun. I recommend it to anyone who visits. I'd explain more, but that'd ruin the fun!
Once again full of food we set off for one last sight: the Tokyo Tower. We didn't go to the observation deck, but just snapped some photos from the ground and people watched a bit in the mini-mall underneath. The highlight of this people watching was a school field trip. It was already almost 8:00pm and they were all there! Do they ever get to go home? Also, it appeared that they only visited the tower to purchase things from the gift shop as they all quickly left most of them with shopping bags in hand.
Winnie has passed out. I guess I'll pick it up again tomorrow with an early visit to the imperial gardens.