Real Tokyo

Well, I guess somehow it's been 5 days since my last update. The days really do go by so fast. This past week, we took advantage of our rail pass (which lets us ride any JR line train for free for 7 days) and visited a whole bunch of 100 yen shops (which are essentially the Japanese equivalent of dollar stores, only things are much better quality). Tuesday, we went to a 7 floor one in Funabashi, which is outside of Tokyo kinda in the middle of nowhere. I think we ended up spending close to 4 hours there.

And there it is! After spending the afternoon there, we took the train back to Tokyo (as that's where the Sobu Rapid Line stopped) and figured we might as well see what the actual capital of Japan had to offer. I assumed it would be nothing but a bunch of big skyscrapers and office buildings, but I was wrong!

But not entirely! There were plenty of skycrapers to be seen (along with that guy down there who was stretching. Cinnamon wanted me to include him in the picture).

We started walking in some arbitrary direction when we passed a map and noticed the Imperial Palace wasn't too far away. So we started walking that way and came across this neat little park with all these fountains.

Here I am standing in front of them, looking like an idiot. (In case you were wondering, I was trying to hide my tacky plastic bag full of dollar-priced merchandise behind me).

Just look at those big cheesy smiles! The next few pictures were taken from the grounds around the Imperial Palace (since it was late when we got there and I'm pretty sure they don't allow just anyone to walk on up there). It seemed like a really big place, and we only saw two sides of it. So here's what we saw:

At this point, as I was taking this picture, this old Japanese guy (who I'd say was probably in his 60s or 70s) came up and started talking to Cinnamon, asking her where she was from and stuff. So we ended up talking to him for close to half an hour, I'd say. Clearly, he was just using us to practice his English, but he was doing a pretty good job. We were impressed. When we told him we had been in the country since June 5th, he assumed that we must be wealthy millionaires, seeing as how Japan is such an expensive country. Hahaha, I wish!

We were trying to get a picture of the two of us with the palace grounds in the background. Can you tell it was a little windy that evening?

Lastly, Tokyo Tower! This was actually the closest we have been to it, even though the place where we're staying is within a few miles of it. Maybe one day we'll actually get to see it up close. But for now, this will have to do.

After that, we headed back to the station to go find somewhere to eat. And since I still have quite a few pictures from that night, I'll stick them in my next post so this one doesn't get too long.