Our Fabulous Tokyo Trip

John and I were very fortunate to have such great friends willing to watch our kids for 4days while we took a quick trip to Tokyo last week. The purpose of this trip was for John and I to be able to attend the Tokyo Temple that is there that was built by our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. When we lived in the states, we were very fortunate to live near a temple for us to attend, but now, it takes great planning, time and money to make those special trips to the temple since there is not one in Okinawa.

Anyway, we had a great time, and of course missed the kids terribly, but we were very grateful to have some real couple-time together and to do some fun sight-seeing that I'm sure the kids would not have tolerated.

So here is a highlight of our wonderful trip:

Wednesday:
John and I dropped the kids off early that morning and headed off to the Naha Airport to catch her flight. It was pretty uneventful and soon we found ourselves in Tokyo and we were able to make it to our hotel, the New Sanno with plenty of daylight to spare to start our sight-seeing tour.

We first walked around the area and quickly located the LDS Temple a few blocks away, which we tried to attend the temple as much as we could:




We found just another mile or so up the street an area called Roponngi, where there were amazing buildings you could go to the top and see the city.






It was pretty cold and windy that day:


We headed back to the hotel and ate at the hotel's Japanese restaurant and both John and I just fell in love with the food! So good!

Thursday:
We had talked back and forth about whether to do Tokyo Disneyland, and boy do I wish we hadn't. We didn't know that it was Japanese Spring Break, and after sitting an hour in line just to buy our tickets (that should have been an indicator to leave, which John mentioned, but since we were finally close to the ticket booth, I declined), we then spent the rest of the day doing nothing because all the big rides like splash mountain and thunder mountain had 3 hour wait lines! No kidding! As soon as we got into the park, we ran to Space mountain and were able to get a Fast Pass for 5pm that evening!



First ride of the day was Star tours because it was the only line under an hour's wait....John is not too happy at this point....

Most of the girls here were wearing super short shirts, if they weren't wearing their school uniform that had super short skirts...and did I mention that it was FREEZING this day?


The music show in front of the castle, which was very interestingto watch and almost an insult to Disney music...even though it started all cute, with Minney playing the violin with these girls, it then turned weird with strange costumes and strange redintions of innocent songs with a rap twist....no pictures of those as we lost interest in the show and continued walking around.

We pretty much got on maybe 3 rides for the whole day and we were just sitting around waiting for our fast pass time to come and then as soon as we rode Space Mountain, we were out of there. I must say I am very disenchanted with Disneyland out here as it was not the same Disney that I know in the states....at least we didn't have the kids with us to make it ever more miserable for.

That night, we ventured out to a local Japanese resturant and again, the food was delicious!

Friday:
We started the day with going to the LDS temple, and when our session was finished, we quickly got on the subway to do some more sight-seeing, as we felt we had wasted the previous day and needed to make up some time lost.

Did I mention how intimidating the Subway and train system is here:

Luckily, after a day or two, I think we got the hang of it, and I must say that I have never seen a cleaner and more organized city in my life.

So we made our way out to the Akasaka Temple with our friends Victor and Melanie Norris.

We did some shopping at the nearby markets...
We were amazed by the shere-size of this place...




We thought this urn was interesting...people burn insense and then breath the smoke in and rub it in their hair because they believe it brings good health.

Next to the Urn is this fountain where you can wash your mouth and hands, or drink the water to be cleansed too. (at least that is what we understand from watching others do it).

The art inside was beautiful and was about the only thing I was allowed to take a picture of inside the temple.

I thought this was funny to see an older gentlemen riding a bike, wearing a nice suit and talking on his cell phone!


After a nice day of sight-seeing, shopping and local bakery taste-testing, we were feeling very confident to try another local Japanese resturant we found to show our friends how good it was.

However, we quickly learned upon sitting down and scanning the menu that the cuisin here was more like what John Zimner's of Bizarre Foods TV show should love to try....
This was John's pick of Sandfish...

He ate the whole thing; head, bones and tail.....I told him I would not kiss him for a week! I played it safe by ordering Chinese Wonton soup, while avoiding menu items like Horse Arteries, whale meat and liver and pig intestine soup. GROSS!

John's other meal choice I think was supposed to be a pork-kabob....who knew that it would come with skin and a patch of hair....I about gagged, but John ate around the hair...again, no kissing for a month now!



Saturday:
Our friends, the Norris came with us to do some a little more sight seeing together, and I had been reading in my Japan book about Japanese Theater, and I thought I just had to experience it for myself.

So we set off to find the theater, and saw that the show was sold out for the afternoon, however, they sell One Act tickets for the very back row for those who want to experience just a taste of the theater. We jumped at the chance and waited an hour in line to get our tickets.

However, after about 20 minutes into the show, I was slightly confused because there was no music, dancing or puppets like I had read about...just different actors sitting on pillows doing some kind of monologue....and had we been able to understand the language, it might have been less boring and disappointing.

After an hour, our group was thoroughly bored to tears and we stepped out the back...the stories of lengends that they tell in their theater's must be good stories, because the place was packed!

We then made our way over to Shibuya Street which I believe is the busiest intersection in the world. It's pretty crazy how many people feed onto this street and then the light turns red for the traffic, there is no wrong way to cross this street I guess.


Getting ready to cross:

Pure Craziness!


After pedestrian-watching for a bit, we decided our tired feet had enough in them to see one more thing before we needed to head to the hotel to pick up our bags and go to the airport back to Okinawa.

So we made our way over to the Meiji Shrine, which made John really happy as he felt that he finally saw a place that looked like in all the ninja movies he had seen.

These pagota gates are huge!
I have loved seeing so many women wearing the traditional Kimono dress.
While visiting the shrine, we were so lucky to witness an actual Japanese wedding party walk through the shrine on their way somewhere....very neat!




Our trip was so wonderful and was a very much-needed break for me as it has been at least 3 years since I have had any time off as a mom...it's a 24/7 job that I love, but hey, who doesn't appreciate a little R&R once in a while!

A huge thank you to our friends the Stinchfields, Kisers and Nixons for watching our kids! It sounds like they all had lots of fun while mom and dad were gone!