tanukis and other things we liked in tokyo

Partway through our time in Tokyo, we discovered the Tanuki. Tanukis are Japanese raccoon dogs that are a real animal and also a folk god. We never saw the real animal but we saw plenty of the folk god. You can recognize him by his signature straw hat, promissory note, bottle of sake and giant testicles (seriously). He is a sign of good luck and prosperity that stores will display outside, and there is even temple devoted to the Tanuki.

Tanuki at a Tanuki temple.

There's a whole street named for them in Tokyo where these shrines line the street.

Tanuki are also popular in selling commercial products (and yes, Mario's Raccoon suit in Mario Bros, is actually a Tanuki suit in Japan).

There are even Tanuki who will laugh at you if you get your hand caught in the Tokyo subway door.

We couldn't leave Japan without a Tanuki of our own, so, after much searching, we bought this little guy.

Those aren't feet between his bottle of sake and promissory note.

Not all statues in Tokyo were quite as cute and cuddly - or well-endowed - as a Tanuki. This guy was standing guard outside a Buddhist temple.

The Japanese seemed to be all about Christmas. We were there in mid-November and whole city was done up in Christmas decorations... but Christmas in Tokyo can be a psychedelic journey as you can see from this mall's Christmas decorations.

Another funny thing we saw a lot of in Tokyo was sleeping on the subway. Literally, 50% of the subway would be asleep at any given time. In Japan there is a word for working yourself to exhaustion, and it's a apparently the most desired state there is. So whether you are really that tired or not, everyone sleeps on the subway (maybe to make people think they worked that hard, or maybe because they really did. We aren't sure.)

Five people, all asleep, and this was just a random train at maybe 4 pm.

One part of Tokyo we really liked was that there were toilets everywhere. Out in public, in subways, everywhere there were toilets and they were really nice. This picture is of a men's toilet in one of the busier subways in Tokyo.

Fancy hotel? No, men's room in a subway station.

One one of our last days in Tokyo, we heard a lot of racket going on outside from our Hotel room. We went out to investigate and found out that the citizens of our district of Tokyo were setting the official Guinness Record for the most people shining their shoes at once. We thought of joining them, but Andrew only had flip flops and Maggie didn't want to ruin her new boots.

Tokyo, you were crazy, but we liked you.

tokyo, what a great city

We headed out early for another big day in Tokyo, a city we were quickly falling in love with.  We started out by going to the Meiji Jingu temple, one of the larger Shinto temples in the middle of Tokyo. It is on a large piece of land and once you enter it, you forget you are in one of the largest cities in the world.

One of the Entrances to the whole complex.

This is what it looked like once you entered the complex - forest and nature.

The lead up to the temple was lined in wine barrels on one side and sake barrels on the other. They were given to the temple to christen it every year - our type of place.

The temple itself was modest but nice. While we were there a wedding was going one and we got to see a procession walk through the temple.

A funny thing that we saw around the temple was the donation of vegetables. Some were just small piles of vegetable, while others where huge monstrosities of vegetables made into boats.

After the temple we headed back to our favorite park for a picnic. The Temple complex was actually connected to the park, so all we had to do was look for the closest convenience store to pick up picnic supplies. I don't think we've said it yet, but convenience store food in Japan is really good and even locals eat there all the time. We fell in love with these little triangular sushi-esque things called onigiri, which are a popular on-the-go snack in Japan (we most often ate the tuna and mayo flavor, which was like tuna salad in rice and seaweed).

On our search for picnic supplies, we ran across a thrift store that had the complete wrong idea about what type of climate Chicago has.

With picnic supplies in hand we headed to the park.

 It was a big day in the park for animals and we saw all sorts of dog walking and even a few cat walkers.

tokyo cat cafe

Something we had heard about and wanted to experience in Tokyo were their cat cafes. If you don't know what a cat cafe is, it is a place you can go, that sometimes serves drinks like a cafe, where there are tons of cats to pet. The Japanese love their cats, but the small apartments of Tokyo aren't always conducive to having pets, so cat cafes are there for cat lovers to get their fix. Since we had been missing our cats, it was perfect for us as well.

The cafe we went to was 1000 Yen for the both of us (US$10--cheaper than most of the cat cafes--some were expensive!) and was unlimited on time. As soon as we entered the cafe, we were greeted by the first of many cats we would become acquainted with that day.

At first the cats were a little stand offish.

This guy was a ragdoll, and from some angles, reminded us a lot of our kitty, Whiskey

But then we learned that, like most cats, they wanted you to come to them.

Some cats where marked as bad cats, meaning you need to pet them carefully.

Other cats, you could just tell they were bad cats.

The cats at this cafe were shelter cats, so there were a fair share of scared cats as well.

But there were plenty of nice cats who loved to be petted - and we loved petting them.

The whole cafe was set up with things for the cats to play on and high places for them to survey their territory.

They rotated the cats, so the ones not in the room were back in their private rooms which you could see through windows on the walls around the main room. The below cat never came out to play, but we heard they called him Grandpa and he was the largest cat I have ever seen. A child could have laid on that bed he is on.

They even had set up places to take pictures of the cats at their most regal.

By the end of our few hours there, the cats had really warmed up to us, even the mean ones.

 After an afternoon of frolicking with cats, we had worked up an appetite and went to a restaurant where you order your food from a vending machine outside, then the cook prepares it right in front of you inside.

We could absolutely not figure out what to do with this machine at first. We pressed random buttons until we got it to do something, and a nice passer-by mimed what to do the rest of the way. (No idea what the "No Dangerous Goods" means.)

This is what we ended up with from the vending machine!

good drinks, nice tubs, robes and small rooms

This post is really about a few of the things we liked about Tokyo hotels, despite their small dimensions. So, to start off with, Tokyo loves its drinks. There are hundreds of types of sakes that come in sizes from juice boxes to milk cartons. The juice boxes were Andrew's favorite.

Another part of the drinking culture we enjoyed in Tokyo was their dark beers. It looked like most of the major breweries made a dark beer, and they all seemed to be pretty good.

I know you're thinking, what do drinks have to do with the hotel? Well, all the hotels we stayed in had vending machines that sold them.

One of our favorite things about the hotels in Tokyo was the fact that on top of showers, they all had large hot tubs that you could soak in. It's part of the culture--there are bathhouses just for this, but the tradition extends to many of the hotels as well. The tubs and showers outside them are communal, and it's perfectly normal for them. The ones in our hotels had weird hours and would sometimes alternate between which gender they were open for, but in all, a nightly soak was always much appreciated.

Which brings me to another nice thing about Tokyo hotels: robes. Once you come in from the busy streets, the first thing you do in your room is shed your clothes for a robe. Everyone does it and you don't even feel weird walking the halls or hanging out in the common areas in a robe.

Yes you sit on that small stool to shower, but then you get in the hot tub, and it's open to multiple people at once (just segregated by gender)

Maggie says we should have taken this picture from a more flattering angle, but it's the only one we have of the robes

So despite the fact that our room was four feet by ten feet, we still really liked our stay in Tokyo hotels.

I had to stand in the hall to capture the whole room. Those are actually both walls of it you can see in the picture.

beautiful tokyo

We had already gone to one really nice park in Tokyo, but we heard that it had some real gems. We decided to go to Koishikawa Korakuen Park which was supposed to be the oldest Japanese Garden in Tokyo and a favorite place of the old Shogunate rulers before it was open to the public.

The Park definitely lived up to its reputation as a beautiful place within the heart of Tokyo. Inside of it, you had a hard time remembering that you were surrounded by skyscrapers. It was probably one of the most beautiful places we had ever eaten a lunch of convenience store food.