Monday in Tokyo

 

Today we were to take the Hop On – Hop Off Bus around Tokyo. Pauline, who had no inhibitions about asking people for directions won the award for world’s best travel navigator. I quite frankly was pleased and pleasantly relieved to have her take control of the navigating. Using Google Maps she was able to get us around Tokyo by foot and by metro quite easily. Kudos to her!

 

So I basically followed her lead and we chatted along, snapping pictures along the way. We ended up walking 19,000 steps a day and biking 19 kilometers on our Tokyo bike tour – which I highly recommend.

 

On our way to the Hop On – Hop Off Bus we stepped into another pastry shop in between changing bus routes. We did Blue, Red, then Green, because the Blue route gets crowded in the afternoon. While waiting in line for boarding, we met a rather large family from Romania! Of all places.

 

They were quite chatty and the youngest generation of them spoke some English pretty well. Their dad was talking to us about the economy which he said was better now and much improved since the days of Chchescou – How could it be any worse – whose entire family kids and all were lined up in the family palace house and shot dead execution style. That was in 1987 I think?

 

Pauline and I sat on the upper deck of the open air bus. We rode under Tokyo Tower, 🗼which is modeled after the Eifel Tower and we passed a Waze Steak 🥩 Building- all eight floors are steak restaurants! That would be something for our hubs!

 

We hopped off at a stop for Gyoen Gardens, which turned out to be closed. So we hiked a long way to find Shibuya Scrambling. Since my four day SIM card was up and her phone battery was low, we followed other people and a family from Australia who were heading there.

 

Finally finding Shibuya Scrambling, was kind of a let down. It wasn’t as large and impressive or as crowded as I was anticipating. Anyway, we sampled some strawberries and grapes on a skewer covered with a hard candy glaze, so that was unique.

 

Then we walked a long way to the end of the line bus stop, where we waited a while to hop-on again and head back to our onboarding stop. From there we walked back to our Smile Hotel.

 

Along our walking I might add that it was a nice variety of scenery walking through small neighborhood streets, alleyways and lush trees, hydrangeas filled the streets giving Tokyo a small neighborhood charm even the tree lined boulevards remind me of Paris. And some of the Tokyo neighborhood restaurants and stores, 7-11’s have a San Francisco vibe where everyone goes to frequent the places in their neighborhood.

 

TOKYO DAY FIVE: 

Chocolate pastry shop

Marron cake

 

Near Mitsubishi building start point

 

Hop on hop off bus

 

Blue first because it fills up later in the day

 

Red

 

Then Green

 

Gyoen Garden closed Monday

 

Alice in wonderland restaurant

 

Audio guide

 

Scramble crossing

 

Best sushi 🍣 restaurant

Tuna

Squid 🦑 tender

Egg again for dessert

Monday, June 10, 2024

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Monday June 10, 2024