tokyo, day three

On 4/27/07, Leo wrote:

It’s after day 3, and it’s 9:30am on Friday. We slept very well, but we woke up at around 6am, even though we wanted to sleep in.

Yesterday we had breakfast at Cafe Veloce, a Japanese coffee shop. It’s like Starbucks, but with better food and better service. We ate salmon sandwiches and royal ice milk tea. Royal is 30 yen more than the regular iced tea, but has fresh milk instead of packaged milk. Lucy and John showed up for breakfast, and Jennifer also showed up to get a sandwich.

After breakfast, we walked toward Sensoji Temple, and bought a cookie from a bakery on the way to Sensoji. The sun started to shine brightly at the temple, and we took pictures. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery, so we were down to one camera. We managed to take pictures of high school kids gathering smoke fumes into their clothes, because it’s apparently good luck.

After Sensoji, we traveled to Ryoguku, home of the Tokyo-Edo museum. After learning about the history of Japan for a few hours, we were set to travel to Ginza. At 3pm, the skies turned dark grey, and we saw the largest downpour and windstorm of our trip. Trees, once vertical, were blown horizontal. Rows of schoolchildren were looking out of windows, amazed at the amount of wind and falling water. Pedestrians were being drenched as they fought to keep their umbrellas open. We decided to eat instead of brave the insane weather, and we finally had our first chasiuramen and tempura soba of our vacation.

When the rain died down, we walked to Ginza, a district known for its huge department stores. I was looking forward to visiting the Sony store. They had new computers and mp3 players, but I was not as impressed as I was when I visited and played with the first generation playstation. We bought a custard-filled pastry from the milky store, and ate it as we waited for the rest of the group, who had gone to the Canon building. We spent most of our time at Uniqlo, a Japanese Gap-style store. We returned to Ueno, bought some onigiri from the Neways convenience store, and ate at the hotel. We were planning to head out for karaoke, but John came home late, and Lucy came home even later than John.

I slept, took a long shower, and then slept some more. We re-packed our bags, and now I feel really good. We haven’t walked this far and this often for a long time. I hope we get foot massages. I hope today will be nice and relaxing.

It’s been tiring, but I am thankful for good weather, and good friends.