Walking Adventures

Well the first full week in Tokyo is officially over... and what a week it was.

My week finished off with lectures and a ton of walking and exploring. Tokyo is a safe city, so it is nice to be able to walk around at night (on Friday night I finally saw Tokyo Midtown, quite by accident after exploring the neighborhood... I knew there should be a shortcut!... Tokyo Midtown is an upscale shopping area (and also houses the Ritz Carlton),I felt entirely under-dressed in my shorts and t-shirt. We went into a "Premium Grocery Store... and premium it was, grapes for $100!!).

Paul and I had lots of exploring planned for the weekend. Saturday morning we got up and went to Denny's (after two weeks in Asia, I was craving a good American breakfast). The Denny's here though is very upscale (although very affordable). Classical music was played and complemented by a sophisticated decor (are you sure we're in Denny's?).

Fueled up for the day, we started walking towards Hama-Rikyu Gardens. I was the navigator (since I take after my Dad's sense of direction) so I was able to get us there... although it required about 45 minutes of walking in the heat and humidity. The gardens were beautiful in an overgrown/secret garden sort of fashion. We did manage to spot some Geishas being photographed which was pretty neat. There was also a long bridge that crossed a pond filled with hundreds of jumping fish!

Because of the humidity, we decided to take the metro back to the Roppongi area rather than walking the hour (it's okay to cheat every once in a while, I walk an average of 3 hours a day!). We arrived back to Roppongi and wanted to go to the Observation Deck. We learned that to do that, you have to pay for the visiting exhibit of the Mori Modern Art Musuem, oh well, we'll visit that too. The exhibit was a Retrospective on the Last 20 Years of the Turner Prize. The Turner Prize originated in London and is given every year to a contemporary artist. It's very prestigious, but also, naturally, controversial. The last 20 years of artists were on display so it was a fascinating exhibit. Highlights include films, sculptures, a room with lights that go on and off (that is the art piece), and the strangest: a calf and cow cut in half and preserved so that you could walk between the pieces and see the inside of a cow. Umm... no beef for me for the next few days, thanks.

Having made our round through the museum, we went up to the observation deck which was actually the helipad of the Mori Roppingi Hills Building (which is at least 53 floors high!). The view was gorgeous (even better than the shorter Tokyo Tower's view) and we were able to spot our hostel as well as the garden we had visited in the morning.

At this point, my feet were screaming mercy so we decided to go for lunch and head back to the hostel. No wonder my feet were tired, we had been walking for about 4 hours straight with no sitting!! We ate at Subway (I know, a totally western-eating day) and then looked outside in time to see the monsoon beginning, so we wound up killing time in Starbucks waiting for the rain to pass. In a break from the weather, we dashed the 15 minute walk back to the hostel and I finally rested my feet, at this point it's about 4:30.

But no rest for the weary! Paul decided he wanted to go out to Carrefour(still in search for his Pop-Tarts). So we organized to leave at about 5:15 to go to a Tokyo Suburb. It was about a total of 50 minutes travel time, with one transfer. We at first got on the local train, but quickly figured that out and switched to a express train (thank goodness! the difference in the two times would have been twenty minutes). We were able to pick up some goodies at Carrefour and I made it back to Tokyo in time to talk with my parents via Skype, before watching "The Nanny Diaries" and "Waitress" and falling fast asleep.