Continued from Tokyo Day 2.

Our last full day in Japan. Glad that we are leaving to go home tomorrow, it’s been a long enough trip. I did receive a surprise this morning via text. My best friend since 4th grade JM randomly texted me this morning about how there’s this street and plant nursery in Tokyo that RL would love….wait what? JM, are you in Tokyo? Yup, as it turns out, he’s in Tokyo for work and the work trip came together so quickly that he had forgotten that I was going to be in Japan. Now, neither of us knew of each other’s schedule so it was pure coincidence that we are both in Tokyo at the same time. We are leaving town tomorrow, and JM just got into town last night. Must make meet up happen.

We’ve been saving most of our shopping in Japan for Tokyo. The kids had really wanted to go shop at Don Quijote in Osaka, but I knew we would come away with a lot of extra stuff that we would need to haul to Kyoto, Hakone, and then Tokyo. So I made a deal with them that I would find a Don Quijote in Tokyo and we would shop then. Therefore, this morning, we are going to visit a Don Quijote in Asakusa.

Beautiful house and garden.

It’s not even 9am yet, so still too early for most shoppers. RL read that Don Quijote gets busy quickly, so best to show up before 9am or in the night since it’s a 24 hour store.

As per usual, it’s a mystery on what we are doing today. The kids have no idea we are going to Don Quijote this morning.

Kids, do you see what I see?

Giant pachinko parlor.

We are here, and it’s a big one.

They’ve got salt water fish tanks in the entrance.

The “sell everything” store. So wild.

Groceries.

It’s like a candy store for the kids…and RL. They just want to buy everything.

Nope, you are not buying a fake gun.

Our kids almost walked into this section.

Just straight up sex shop right here in this section, and in other sections straight up toy store for kids.

Look at at that giant zipper.

Oh man, we bought a lot of stuff. Had a buy a new duffel bag to haul all the stuff here plus all the stuff that we got earlier at Taito Station. We also dropped the most amount of money buying stuff here, and good thing we semi planned for it and brought our passports. Certain items are sealed in tax free bags and cannot be used/opened until after we leave Japan. But…how do they reinforce that? You could just open the bags, take everything out and put it in your luggage, and then claim that you had paid taxes on it all…

That new duffel that I’m carrying on my back is packed full with stuff we got at Don Quijote. On top of this, RL is also carrying several bags by hand…don’t know how we will haul all of this stuff back to Austin…

Kids wearing their new bought items from DQ.

Fresh OJ vending machine, gotta try it.

Cool machine, but the OJ wasn’t the best I’ve had.

A machine grinding tea leaves making green tea powder.

To be made into green tea cream puffs. I love this deep vibrant green of the matcha. I want a car painted in this color.

Sensoji in the heart of Asakusa.

Yes kids, I know it’s hot. But if you’d just stand still and take one good photo, we won’t have to stand here any longer.

Super crowded here.

And that’s the gauntlet that we’ll have to walk through in a bit to leave this place.

Huge crowds, snapped a quick pic, now we should leave and head back to hotel.

Alright, time to walk the gauntlet.

Beyond this gate is the Nakamise shopping street.

Kids, smile and don’t move, we can make this quick.

Nakamise shopping street. Nope, we will not do any shopping here.

Just need to make it through this crowd to the gate.

You can tell how touristy a place is by which side the crowd walks on. Here, it’s all walk on the right side like most of the world. But in a place with mostly Japanese everyone walks on the left.

Made it!!

Glad to get out of that crowd.

So the round plate rotates the car…but then you still need to back up, and then it’s still at an angle. Seems like would be easy to bump into the wall.

GTO and Lotus 7?

Since we made tenative plans to meet up with JM tonight, we’ve had to change our schedule. We were supposed to have a more leisurely afternoon, but now we are going to try to front load our activities so that we can be free earlier in the evening to meet up with JM.

Dropping off all of our shopping bags at the hotel, then heading straight back out to the subway.

Go down to go up.

A short two stops later we are at Skytree Town.

I hate the elevator setup. Some takes you to the floor you want, others don’t. Confusing.

Another Pokemon center here. No kids, we already went to one so we are not going to visit this one today.

Gonna go up the Skytree. We had timed entry tickets for 4pm, but hopefully they’ll let us exchange them for an earlier time. On the tickets they said that exchanges are possible…or maybe lost in translation. Either way, worst case scenario, I’ll just rebuy the tickets. It’s just what needs to happen in order to make our schedule work to see JM later.

We showed up to the check in line at Skytree, there wasn’t a line to get tickets. Cool, it’s around lunch time so maybe they are not super crowded. They initially said that they won’t exchange tickets…ok…it says otherwise on my printed ticket. Then when I said can I just buy tickets for the current time still, they then said they would make an exception. Cool.

But seriously, it’s not a busy time right now down here. Why even give me a bit of a hard time about it?

Made it to the observation deck, and it is crowded up here.

Views are great. Apparently on a really clear day, you can see Mt. Fuji.

Asahi.

Our hotel is over there somewhere.

Found it. Draw a line straight up from the first A in APA HOTEL, and there’s the foot bath rooftop balcony of our hotel.

PL said Tokyo is bigger than she thought now that she’s up here. Yeah girl, it’s like the biggest metropolis in the world. Just city as far as the eye can see.

Alright, let’s go down to the lower level where we can get an elevator down. It’s too crowded up here to stay here for long. We accidentally waited in the incorrect line for a little bit, that line was to take the other escalator to go up to the upper level observatory. Oops.

This is the line to get down to the ground. What an unorganized mess. Very un-Japan like.

Seriously, this isn’t the Japan I know. Just unorganized crowds jostling for a spot in the line. The old Japan would have attendants here making sure a nice organized line gets formed. Sigh.

Getting closer.

Finally made it down. Time to hit the foodcourt for some lunch.

Also crowded here. It may take a couple of rounds of walking to be able to find a table for 5.

That looks good.

And indeed very good. Simple and good, yum.

Took us a little bit of time, but we did manage to snatch a table in this crowd.

Skytree Town is basically a giant mall under the Tokyo Skytree. Might as well get some small car models for myself.

RL and the kids wanted chocolate covered bananas….I was against this. Sugar sends the kids into a frenzy.

The Sumida Aquarium is also located in Skytree Town. I got the Skytree Observatory and aquarium combo tickets yesterday. Only the observatory was timed entry, so we shouldn’t have an issue getting into the aquarium. Ever since not being able to get into the Osaka Aquarium, I felt like I had disappointed the kids. They were so excited to go to the aquarium, I was so excited to go to the aquarium. Well hey, now we are at an aquarium. It’s smaller, but perhaps it’ll still be decent. Never been here before.

CL points.

PL points.

KL points.

I love this aquatic lawn plant in this tank. It looks like an underwater meadow.

So cool.

To be continued at Tokyo Day 3 Part 2.