I think I'm turning Japanese!

Well it was sad leaving you Chang-Ro, but we will meet again soon, I am sure of this. Thanks for all your time and help, we never would have been able to do it without you! We truly discovered the best kept secret in Asia.
Alas, the trip must go on, we are still going, going, going. But wearing out too. We arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon and treated ourselves to a nice hotel for our final night in Asia, after all our huts and guestrooms. The Hotel New Otani was definitely fancy, its built right in the middle of a garden and carp pond in Akasaka. We planned on cramming all Tokyo into one night and one morning, and were successful!


The first night brought us to Shinjuku, the part of town that lights up at night. Tokyo is the most crowded city I have ever experienced. It was Saturday night, so of course the subways were crowded, but we read that the Shinjuku station alone sees upwards of 2 million passengers passing through daily! And boy is the Tokyo subway confusing, there are at least 12 different lines, and each station has mazes of exits and passages, but we made it relatively unscathed with our trusty map.


After stopping into a side restaurant and getting some delicious Japanses dumplings we wandered around a bit, then back to the subway for Roppongi, which was toted as the hip nightlife scene. We also learned of Roppongi Hills, an architectural project 15 years in the making that fuses housing, work, and play into one community. We also checked out the Park Hyatt, very fancy, someday a return visit will be in order...

The next morning we headed to the fish market, which had already wrapped up but nonetheless we saw some monster crabs. Then, we headed up to see the cherry blossoms at Ueno, Tokyo's biggest park. It was very beautiful, and surprise, surprise, crowded! We got a lot of exercise strolling through the park and it was very relaxing.



Next we headed to Ginza, the high class shopping district compared to NYC's Park Avenue. There were a lot of shoppers out, but we stuck to window shopping. We got Fendi, Prada, Gucci, and every other classy brand you could name drop, but apparently Dior's display is too ritzy to be video-taped from outside. HAH.

That was Tokyo in a day. More time would have been nice, but we are itching to be able to communicate with strangers when necessary and eat American food!