Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.
I have to admit something here: At the end of day one we did not want to be in Japan. Total exhaustion and culture shock combined to make us almost regret our trip altogether. We went to bed agreeing that after a good night's sleep we would probably feel differently.
It was true. Day two was fantastic.
I woke up at 5:30 and, after a shower, called Sid on the Skype phone to ask him how school and Cub Scouts had been. After that, we headed down to the McDonalds, determined that we could at least get a breakfast order right.
As we walked up to the counter -- which happened to be open-air on the ground floor of this three-story McDonalds -- a girl started to ask us in Japanese what we wanted. Another girl nudged her and gave a look which indicated, "these people are obviously foreigners" and set a picture menu in front of us. It is interesting to point out here that in Japan, the Filet-o-Fish is on the breakfast menu.
Anyway, we pointed at the Sausage Egg McMuffin combo, indicated we wanted two of them, and then pointed to Coke and milk. We took our tray up to the third floor and sat looking out the window as we ate.
The first thing we noticed was that the place was packed, and yet no one was making a sound. It was a bit unnerving.There was American pop hip-hop of some kind playing softly, a guy was playing Animal Crossing on his DS, many were reading, and some others had their heads down, resting quietly.
The hash browns and sausage muffins were great...perfect comfort food for our first morning in a strange land. We agreed that they tasted just slightly different from their American counterparts, and were actually better. My Coke was served in a tiny Japanese portion and Erin's milk had a drawing of an anime-style Ronald McDonald kicking a soccer ball on it.
Clearing your tray is quite a bit more complicated at a Japanese McDonalds. They had separate containers for plastics and paper, and another place to pour out your excess beverages.
We decided that, since it was such a nice partly-cloudy morning, we should visit Shinjuku-Gyoen, a botanical garden (supposedly the best in Tokyo) just a few blocks from our hotel. The garden opens at 9 AM and we arrived at 8:45 AM, so we waited outside the gate. Inside, a man in a green uniform was making a broom by attaching sticks to a handle and using it to sweep leaves off the walk. Promptly at 9 a woman walked up to the gate and unlocked it. We paid our 200 yen each and walked through the turnstile.
For the next couple of hours we explored this huge park/garden. Several types of gardens are represented here: Densely forested areas with winding paths through dark, damp areas (as the first visitors of the day we had to avoid many spiders who had stretched their webs across the path), traditional Japanese gardens with ponds full of koi and bridges to small islands with carefully groomed trees, and lastly, organized french style flower gardens.
When the sun did come out it got a bit warm, but mostly it was comfortably shady and in the low 70s. We saw several groups of Japanese school children in matching yellow hats, several resident cats who all had their right ears identically notched, a photographer taking sexy photos of a girl on the grass, an elderly woman practicing tai chi in a huge open field, and much more. A sign indicated that we might see tanukis (Japanese raccoon dogs), but unfortunately we didn't. We did see and hear several species of birds we'd never seen, including a bright green parrot-looking thing...I couldn't quite translate its name.
After this we headed North to a Shinto shrine devoted to Yamma, the gatekeeper of Hell. Holding the highly specialized honor of being the largest wooden statue of Yamma in Tokyo, this quaint shrine has a button on the front that you push which temporarily illuminates the statue inside. Other things of interest on the shrine grounds were a tiny shrine devoted to foxes and one that seemed to have an actual mountain of snow inside it...I have no idea how it worked. No one else visited the grounds of this shrine the entire time we were visiting.
Walking back towards the hotel, we stopped in a Lawson's; yet another convenience store. Erin went out on a limb and bought a small can of sour cream and onion Pringles. I bought another onigiri. This one had soy sauce and bits of chicken mixed into the rice and half a boiled egg on top. It was the best thing I've tasted in Japan so far. We also split an awesome Sprite that had guarana and caffeine added. It tasted a bit more sour than a regular Sprite, but was otherwise the same.
We stopped by Takashimaya Times Square to visit a huge store called Tokyu Hands. It describes itself as a crafting supply store, but that doesn't do it justice. They have everything. We only looked at only one floor, really, and will have to go back later. I bought Sidney a couple Dragon Ball Z related toys, then we headed back to the hotel so Erin could rest.
While Erin rested I decided to explore the tower south of our hotel because I had heard it had an ATM that would dispense yen using foreign bank cards. I didn't find it, but I did get a good view of the area.
In the next post I'll describe our experience taking the subway to Akihabara and our visit to my Mecca: The classic videogame store "Super Potato".
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