18,760 steps in Tokyo

the view from my window this morning

I'm starting to think the Japanese are a lot about the new and different, I mean what exactly is this building about? Anyway the day started pretty early today, made myself eat brekki (not my fave meal of the day) and I'm glad I did because wow we covered a lot of ground. We met the rest of the tour group in the tour group in the lobby and our tour guide, Kenji - Ken "because it's easier to say" and we were off to see our first shrine, Meiji Jingu.

ritual cleansing: hands and mouth first

 via the Tori gate which marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred.

This shrine is dedicated to the spirits of the Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken, worshiped by the Japanese people as Gods. Quite crowded, it's popular with both tourists and locals, who bring their children for blessing when they turn one.  

these little cuties were posing so generously for all the tourists I thought they should have a little reward so they got a little koala thanks to Wendy Best who taught me to always have some little Aussie gifts to hand.

next stop was pretty Yoyogi Park

then on to Takeshita-Dori st (shopping and food ally way) where we had potato on a stick for lunch, because we were tired and wanted domething we recognised and maaaan it was delicious, except eating standing in the street outside the shop was not exactly what we were after. Sitting is what we wanted, but no room for sitting and eating and walking is considered rude so standing still it is.

lots of yummy things to eat here.

interesting cafes, but not for eating ... cuddling. Cuddling mini pigs, little dogs, cats, hedgehogs and even otters! We did finally find a lovely cafe that we could sit down in which had delightful food and wonderful tea and pleasant ambience ...

the cup of Darjeeling which saved my life

Sadly, when we checked the times we realised we had two minutes to enjoy all this before we had to leave to rejoin the tour!

With tongues still smarting we ran to the meeting point to discover we were walking to the next shopping street and when we calculated time consumption vs time available before our Team Lab booking we realised we were in arears ... cue mild panic.

a hasty decision was made to depart the tour, catch a taxi - which we carried off with aplomb (and quite chuffed with ourselves) to the other side of town to not miss our time slot and we were all so glad we did because everything you have ever heard about Team Lab is 100% true. It is amazing, mind blowing and gob smackingly beautiful.

We walked home after this, thanks to our local guide (MGM) and google maps. It was cool and surprisingly quiet for this huge metropolis, a very soothing end for this busy day. Took a bit of searching to find dinner, and to be honest I nearly didn't make leg-wise but we team-worked it and enjoyed what we thought was a pretty 'western' dinner. Our guide tells us (on Wednesday) that this place is a place that the locals eat so that made us feel better but you won't find that out till tomorrow because I'm a day behind with the blog ;)