Japan Day 8 - Asakusa & Tokyo Skytree

Our first full day in Tokyo was spent revisiting a few places we took my parents to about 18 years ago. I've been to Asakusa four times, and I think they offer some of the very best shops/okashi (snacks) Japan has to offer in the areas surrounding the Sensoji temple.

We aren't typically early risers on vacation (jet lag, senior citizen travelers), so we don't usually leave the apartment until 9:30-10:00. So by the time we get to our destination (after walking to the station, and catching a series of trains), it can be close to lunchtime. ;-) On this day, I wasn't feeling the touristy restaurants surrounding the temple, so we opted for bento take out meals/beverages from a convenience store. In my opinion, Japan has the very best convenience stores for meals/drinks on the go- they're healthier, lighter, cheaper and delicious. A small sampling of what they have to offer:

Every musubi you could ever imagine!

Once we fueled the beast (me), we were free to cruise the areas surrounding Sensoji temple. We had a plan to meet up with my parents in two hours, but it ended up taking us 3-4 hours to walk the half mile to the temple, because my mom + shopping = HOURS.

The very busy shopping street fronting the temple. It's filled with other Japanese tourists, and often, hundreds of kids from a dozen different schools all on field trips.

Just a tiny handful of the types of wares and goodies being hawked at Asakusa:

These were all kimono outfits for your pet cats and dogs!!! Adorable!

 

Dorayaki appears to be very popular there, and made fresh by a variety of shops. This is the one my parent's ended up buying, as it was the only one being made by hand (vs. machine).

There were a number of kimono/yukata rental stores in the area for visitors to try out an outfit for a few hours...which made it a much brighter place to be with all the colorful kimono around.

I loved this view of the Skytree, which poked though the city buildings so we could see it from the temple.

Sensoji...the temple at Asakusa

We weren't sure if we would be able to walk from Asakusa over to the Skytree, but to our delight, it was possible (there were bridges over the Sumida River with pedestrian access), and it wasn't very far. Perhaps a mile and a quarter at the very most? We stumbled into one of the Lawson 100 stores I'd heard about, and filled up on drinks, mochi and other okashi while we were there. It ended up being an unexpectedly pleasant, scenic walk along the banks of the river, which wound through a park at one point:

 

The river was a perfect place for exercise, with huge, flat, gravel-covered sidewalks for running, walking or biking. It was also beautifully landscaped, scenic and quite peaceful (away from the hustle/bustle of the city). I could've walked there for miles.

Crossing the Sumida river over to the Skytree area

Standing at the base of the Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest free standing structure. The true tallest is the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, which we also went up about this time last year. 

Truth be told, I was initially going to suggest passing on this tower, mostly because we've spent a small fortune going up a number of other 'tall' structures or observation decks in our lifetime- the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Empire State Building in NYC, the Sears Tower in Chicago, Paris' Eiffel Tower, Skytower in Auckland, Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, etc. But the moment I read that the Tokyo Sky Tree offered a glass, see through section of flooring...well, forget that. We HAD to go up.

The lobby of the Skytree, about to get in line for the elevators for the ride up. I'm in love with the ceiling.

The view from 450 meters up in the sky (the tower in its full height is over 600 meters high).

I thought it would be terrifying to walk across the glass, but the glass felt so thick and reinforced, that it really wasn't at all!

 

No trip to an iconic landmark in Japan is complete with cheesy, staged and expensive photos!

Someone was pressured into this photo for his karate Hanshi by grandpa

Once we were done (spent about an hour up top), we caught three trains from the Skytree back to town, so that Rich could navigate us to a few more stops that night:

Another of my million dollar shots from the trip...the boys posing in front of glass art in the subway station in Ginza.

The second official Hello Kitty shop we hunted down on the trip (not including two different Daimaru department stores). My parents were on a serious mission to buy all things HK for their granddaughters. This shop was in Ginza, the Rodeo Drive/Beverly Hills-type district in the city. 

Our final stop of the night, at about 8pm, was back to our train station near the Hachiko Station for a 'light show' we were going to watch with 'Yuri.' This lie was told to my parents so that they knew why we had to be at a specific place at a specific time so late in the evening.

In reality, we were secretly meeting my brother at the Hachiko station. My parents had no idea he had flown in from Seattle just a few hours prior...so when we posed them and Ryan in front of the statue, they had no idea he had jumped into their photo, smiling behind them.

When I showed them the photo right afterwards, they glanced at it, but didn't notice him in the background until we urged them to look more closely. My mom gasped and then ran over to him for a hug once she realized he was there! It was a pretty epic surprise to see their only child living so far away from them, in a place they'd never dreamed of.

Once we navigated him and his partner over to their teeny tiny digs (the aforementioned even smaller apartment we saw in Shibuya), we caught a few more sights in the city with Joey:

I'm not sure why the Mario Bros and crew were cruising the city in little go karts, but it was cute.

Joey had been awake over 20 hours travelling by this point, so we bid him a goodnight with plans to meet up in the morning.

To be honest, we've surprised them with his presence a solid half dozen times (usually him arriving in Kona, however). So I am not sure we can top this surprise, ever. ;-) But hot damn, we will sure try. These people deserve it.