Tokyo Day 1

 We all slept pretty well last night. I did wake up at 3 AM and so did Trevor but we were able to sleep a little bit after that. We were all awake early this morning by about 615. We had planned to leave the room at about eight, but since we were all up and moving, we ended up leaving at 7:15. Our first stop this morning was Senso-hiTemple. 

Breakfast


Senso-ji Temple

The Japanese people absolutely love anything that can give you luck so they sell these lucky charms you can get ones for love for health for long life for passing exams, etc.

You took a little paws from the temple and went down a small shopping street so that we could get some snacks to get changed so that we could purchase our fortunes these are called taiyaki and they are little waffle type things filled with sweet bean paste. Sweet bean paste is the filling in many Japanese sweets. Owen loved them. Anna absolutely hated them.

Then we tried these deep fried potato things that were dipped in a sweet honey sauce. They were quite sweet and delicious.

Now we had enough change to purchase our fortunes. You shake the little metal container until the stick comes out and it has a number on it then you go over to the drawers and you open the number of the drawer that matches your stick and you get your fortune.

Owen got regular luck

Joel got bad luck

Trevor got bad luck

Anna got regular luck

Carly got regular luck

If you get bad luck, you need to tie your fortune to the posts and then they take them and burn them so that you leave your bad luck behind

When we were done with Senso-ji temple, we walked over to Don Quixote, which is a crazy huge large famous Japanese department store that they have on every second block. It is so overwhelming there are sounds everywhere coming from different displays and just anything you can think of on five floors. It sounded like a casino.

Trav found one of the candy bars that YouTubeer we’ve been watching to research Japan had recommended

Millions of flavours of Kit Kats

From there we went to a cat café

These are the names of all of the cats that live there

Basically you go in and pay per 10 minutes. You stay there and you can play with the cats while you have a free drink that comes with your emission.

We bought a few cat treats so the kids could feed the cats

It was just so weird. They actually had these little cat ears you could wear.

After that, we went to this teeny little Ramen place that got good reviews. It only had room for about 10 people to sit in there.Anna and I sat on one table and Trev and the boys sat in a different area of the restaurant so that they could get us a table.

There were some mixed reviews on the Ramen Trevor really loved his. I thought mine was pretty good and I didn’t love hers. I have to say the hard-boiled egg was absolutely delicious.

From there we went to teamlabPlanets, which is an interactive art museum. The first room had just millions of crystals draped everywhere that would change every couple of minutes and do different things. It was crazy and it was all of our favourite room.

From there, we went to the Koi fish room. You waited in knee-deep water, and there were projections of Koi fish on the water and you could interact with them. If you touch them, they would turn into flowers.

Then there was this room filled with giant bouncy balls

There was a crazy bean garden

Then there was this room, which was pretty cool. The animals would walk along the walls and you would use an app to shoot them with a target and if you captured them, they would go into your app and then you could release them back onto the walls. Very fun.

After that, there was a room where you could draw your own art, and then they would scan the picture that you drew and put it onto the wall where it would be animated

This is Trevor snake slithering around the floor

Anna‘s butterfly

I think Owen salamander was the coolest and it was really fun to watch it. Make it its way around the room.

Lastly, there was this giant room filled with live orchids hanging, which would move up and down hard to describe it very cool

By this time it was about 3 o’clock and our feet were aching so it was time for a sit down and some ice cream Owen and Anna got strawberry. Joel got banana chocolate chip and I got Yuzu, which is a Japanese citrus fruit and Trevor got Matcha.

From there, we took a very cool driverless train over to an area called Odaiba. We got the front seat of the train, which was very cool. It went up and down hills and around tight corners. It was really fun.

Odaiba is a waterfront area of Tokyo out in the harbour

We were fading fast at this point and all felt like we needed some caffeine so we got some drinks from the vending machine

Trev got this hot coffee which came out of the vending Machine in a can. mediocre reviews on that coffee

Then we walked over to this giant robot statue called unicorn Gundam every couple of hours he lights up for about one minute and transforms a little bit and does a small show. We got to see that at 5 PM.

There’s a huge shopping complex that’s part of this area so we went into the mall and Anna got these new shoes since her shoes were falling apart and her feet were killing her

Owen and Anna got some shrimp tempera at the mall but Joel Trev and I decided to wait to eat until we were back closer to our Airbnb. After that, we took the subway back towards our hotel the first 25 minute subway ride we had got extremely busy as I guess it was rush-hour at about 630. I have never seen people cram into a subway like that. People would literally take a running start from the platform and just cram in and just push everybody. It got very intense and was not super enjoyable. We got off at Shinjuku station and we were supposed to change subways onto a different line to get back towards our Airbnb, but there was just no way we were going to cram on another subway that tight and every subway that went by was that crowded in the end we decided to pay $25 for a taxi to take us back to our hotel so that we didn’t have to do the crazy crazy subway trip.

By this time, we were exhausted and we decided to just hit a grocery store for dinner. We got a variety of things and just eat in our Airbnb.We just showered and are now writing in the journal and writing this log and can’t wait to head

Oh, I’ll add of Trevor‘s pictures as well

Supper

Add a chicken cutlet to an egg salad sandwich and it is delicious

I forgot to mention we got these crazy foot soothing pads at Don Quixote and use them tonight. They felt weird.

24,000 steps today!