Japan Day 36 - Edo to Tokyo to the 21st Century

Today we had a free day to see what we wanted. I hadn't seen many any of the big attractions so I did 2 of the three star attractions, Originally I had planed to do 3 but I decided I wasn't up to getting up at 4 am to go see the fish market.

The first thing I did was to go see the Tokyo City Hall and go up to the observation deck. It has two towers- north and south. The book said the view was the same but the north has a restaurant and the south had a cheaper cafe. since it was getting close to lunch and being cheap I thought I would go up the south one. One hitch the south one was closed. Oh well. the North tower had a cool view but the restaurant blocked some of it. From up there it looks like the city just goes on forever

Then I went to see the Tokyo Edo Museum. It covers I broad range of the history of Tokyo from the Edo period to post WWII.

The museum was interesting to go through. The allowed photography which was nice and even posted signs on the ones you could use flash on. The museum showed how japan quickly became westernized and had model homes showing how western ways of living were Incorporated into their home.

Then I went back to Akibara to walk through it again and see it during the day when all of the shops are open. I happened upon a cool electronic parts flea market where the vendors were selling individual electrical parts like capacitors and resisters.

At 6 we met for our group dinner. This one was a farewell dinner that was included in the trip fee. Stan found a place in Shibuya that could fit all of use. It was yet another take on the cook at the table restaurant. this time we cooked meat, vegetables and noodles in a broth. It was really good. It wasn't that late when left so we searched for something else to do as a group. first we tried to find a karaoke place but the one we found was to expensive so the next idea was bowling. We asked someone and the pointed us down a couple of blocks and sure enough. There was a giant bowling pin on the roof of the building. The bowling ally was on the 3rd floor and it wasn't to expensive.

It was crazy bowling under black lights. I didn't do very well at all. My wrist started hurting after only about 4 turns. Stan on the hand did very good- He made one of those almost impossible split spares. All the equipment appeared to be imported from America and all the bowling balls were stamped with pounds. Now back to packing- I have to leave here in just a few hours.

The rest of the days photos