Day 35. John and Ashley are big Japanese Anime fans.  Ashley spends a good portion of her free time drawing anime characters.  So it was natural that Japan was on the top 5 list for both of them.  As a result, John has fully taken over the planning and is going to ensure we get the full Tokyo experience while we are here.  

We start with a short walk to a Shinto shrine in Shinjuku Chou Park.  With 8 million Shinto gods, it can be a daunting task to keep up with which shrine we’ve visited follows which god.  This is especially true since John has found the local shrines that have no English translations.  The most impressive part is how there is a sprawling shrine tucked away in the middle of bustling Tokyo that you can’t even see from the street.

After our daily shrine visit, we need to take a taxi or Uber to Sunshine City for our first stop.  It turns out Japan is a very cash based economy which means a lot of places don’t accept credit card.  As a result, I always seem to be low of Japanese Yen. Leanne opts for a taxi which only accepts cash while I opt for Japan Taxi (Japan’s equivalent of Uber) where you can use a credit card.  Leanne simply hails the next taxi that shows up and is whisked off.  I order the taxi on my app and am dismayed to see that they routed a taxi from 12 mins away when there are 20 taxi’s passing me by every minute. After about 15 minutes, the app shows the taxi is here.  I have the license plate number and look left, look right, look up, look down.  No taxi.  My phone rings and it’s the taxi driver calling me.  I answer the phone and realize it’s going to be mighty difficult to ask where he is and explain where I am when he doesn’t speak any English. After 3 calls and another 10 mins of fruitless attempts, the order is cancelled.  I end up hailing a taxi 25 minutes after Leanne did.  Score one for the good old fashion New York hailing a taxi method.

Sunshine City is a gigantic metropolis  inside a 9 story mall that spans multiple city blocks.  We go to the aquarium.  Yes there is an aquarium the size of the one in Long Beach inside a mall.  Yes – Tokyo is that big.  We see an otter show, fish, penguins and other various aquatic critters. 

Next, we hit the Pokémon Center store in the mall. We somehow survive  The kids are fans of Pokémon Go and have a good time in the store.  I remind them to keep their purchases to a minimum as they need to carry anything they buy in their backpack.  Weight gain has been a constant battle – weight gain in our backpacks that is thus increasing the challenge of complying with airline luggage weight limits.

Next we take a taxi to Kanda Myojin Shrine.  Japanese taxis are starting to rank up there with Japanese bathrooms, both of which are necessities in getting around Tokyo.  I insist on going in the same taxi as John who seems to already know the city inside and out. The taxi driver does not speak any English and John is trying to communicate that we want to go to the Kanda Myojin Shrine in Akihabara.  Finally the taxi driver light up, ah ah Akihabara and we off.  The taxi driver pulls up to the….train station.  Apparently Akihabara was the only word he understood and naturally assumed with our backpacks that we were going to the train station.  We decide it’s easier to get out and walk rather than try to explain again the shrine.

The Kanda Myojin shrine is dedicated to the Shinto gods of prosperity, good luck and marriage.  On Sunday, John took us Ashlynn, Justin, Corey and me to a local shrine hidden in the middle of Tokyo.  We cleansed and prayed to the Shinto god.  Only afterwards did we learn the shrine was dedicated to the Shinto god of fertility.  Doop. Had to figure out how to have Ashlynn undo that prayer.  Lesson learned – always make sure you know which Shinto god you’re praying to in advance.

The rest of the afternoon is spending browsing stores Bic Camera, Animate, Mandrake and Don Quixote. Stores in Tokyo are a whole different experience.  They span 8-9 floors high but with a much smaller footprint on each floor and the aisles jammed together with about 12 inches of space in between.  Then onto Gachapon Hall where they have hundreds of gumball like machines that spit out plastic bubbles with prizes.  The last stop in the shopping district is the Sega arcade.

John has arranged for us to stay at a traditional Japanese hotel Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu.  Before checking in, we visit the Demboin Temple Garden (containing the Sensoji Buddhist Temple and Shinto shrine) and Chiyoda Sotokanda (a marketplace).  The traditional hotel has the entry way where we take off our shoes and a single room with cushion pads on the floor, a mini table on the floor with cushions (no chairs), green tea and Yukata robes.

We ask the Japanese check-in woman for a recommendation for a ramen noodle restaurant which she provides. We know we’ve found the perfect local place as the line is really long, all signs and menus are all in Japanese with no English and we are the only non-Japanese patrons in the restaurant.  We are getting good at the pointing to a picture and holding up the number of fingers for how many we want.  There is collective agreement that this is one of the best meals we’ve had so far on the trip.

Today truly is an authentic Japanese experience!