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.

capsule life in tokyo

When in Tokyo, we wanted to get the full experience, so we started our time there by renting two nights in one of their famous Capsule Hotels where you sleep in what look eerily like morgue drawers. And not only did we get a capsule, we got a capsule for two.

Like we had hoped, it was in a room full of capsules. We even had a radio and TV in ours. The first thing Andrew did was lay down and watch Sumo wrestling to recover from a night of sleeping in the Food Court in the Taipei Airport. Soon after that, as we were lying in our capsule, watching Japanese TV in our hotel-provided pajamas and eating wasabi peas, there was an earthquake. It was like, every stereotype rolled into one.

We were on the bottom row

View from inside the capsule for two.

We didn't know what to expect from the hotel, but in the end, it wasn't too bad of an experience. The capsule was cozy and the hotel was quite nice. The only thing we didn't like was the fact that we had to keep our bags on the first floor, bathe on the 3rd floor and sleep on the 5th floor. It was a lot of elevator rides to get stuff done. But beyond that it was a really nice experience.

One thing we wanted to do in Tokyo that we really hadn't done yet on the trip, was just be tourists. We wanted to go out and really explore the city. We only had 9 days in Tokyo and wanted to really experience it.

Our first day out we headed to the Shibuya district which was known for crowded streets and lots of shopping (something we found the whole city full of). It was everything we expected it to be. Right out of the subway, we hit the busiest intersection in Tokyo and wow, it was busy.

The mobs waiting for the walk signal. They are serious about only walking when the walk signal is green in this city.

Every man and woman for herself.

Another reason we headed to Shibuya was because we heard there was a really nice park with the Meji Jungu Shinto Temple in it. We couldn't find the temple, but we really loved the park. There was a farmer's market, a half pipe, a snowboard jump with trucked-in snow, and tons of people practicing choreographed dances, playing sports, having picnics, and a million other things. We saw tons of small dogs and even a few cats being walked. All and all, it was great place to see Tokyo-ites enjoying their weekend. There was also some beautiful fall scenery to take in.

Farmer's Market

Just a couple of the hilarious little dogs, and one goat

After a good time spent in the park, we headed back into the hustle and bustle of Shibuya looking for a famous Ramen restaurant.

Shibuya at night is what you picture Tokyo to be like.

A very popular style of restaurant in Tokyo is one where you order and pay for your meal outside of the restaurant from a vending machine that spits out a ticket. You then go inside and hand the ticket to the chef who makes it and hands it to you. It's Tokyo-style fast food. The Ramen was good, not great, but good enough. It's Ramen, even the stupidest college student can make it but it's hard to make into some gourmet meal. (Though this was much better than your grocery store cup of noodles!)

The vending machine, which luckily had pictures for us foreigners. Not all of them do.

At this particular Ramen shop, there is a long counter divided into individual booths. So you don't have to see your neighbor while you eat, I guess? We figured out how to fold back one part of the divider so we could see each other--and share our noodles, as we always do. Now we can say we've had real Ramen!