Flight home

Saturday was the last full day in Japan for Susan and I. We did some shopping with the kids then returned to Roppongi for Jennifer's birthday dinner.

On Sunday Susan and I checked out of our room and we headed to Tokyo Station with the kids.

We ate lunch, then Susan and I boarded the Narita Express.

At the airport we caught our flight back home. 

Afternoon Tokyo Tour

After a traditional Japanese lunch at Shiodome, we continued our tour.

Our first stop was Hamarikyu Garden.  The gardens were pretty, but the heat and humidity made it hard to enjoy.

From there we drove to Tokyo Bay, near the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba.  There we boarded a boat for a cruise up the Sumida river.

Our cruise ended at the Asakusa shopping district.

From there we walked to Sensō-ji, an ancient Buddhist temple also known as the Asakusa Kannon Temple, the last stop on our tour.

Morning Tokyo Tour

On Friday while the kids went to class, Susan and I took a tour of Tokyo.  We started at the Tokyo Tower, the second tallest building in Tokyo.

Our tour only went to the Main Observatory, which 490 feet high, and not the Special Observatory, which reaches a height of 820 feet, but it still gave some nice views of the city.

From there our bus drove through Shibuya and Yoyogi Park to the Meiji Shrine.

 

We drove by the Diet building, where the Japanese Parliament meets. 

After that we stopped at the Imperial Palace grounds.  On most days the tour goes to the East garden, but on Fridays the garden is closed, so we walked to the bridge to the main gate.

Sophia and the Edo-Tokyo Museum

On Thursday we looked around Sophia University, where the kids would be attending summer classes. 

While the kids attended orientation, Susan and I visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum.  Most of the displays are on the 5th floor of the museum, with the entrance on the 6th.

The museum contained lots of models and displays showing what Edo was like during the Shogun era, and of early Tokyo.

That evening we all went to Roppongi for dinner.  It started pouring while we were there.

Yokohama

Today we took the train to Yokohama, a port southwest of Tokyo and Japan's second largest city.  We spent our day at Minato Mirai 21 (Port Future 21), a major urban development project on reclaimed land, and checked out the Pokemon store and Landmark Plaza.

While Susan and the kids shopped, I went up to the 69th floor of Japan's second largest building, the Landmark Tower.

On a clear day Mt Fuji is visible from the tower, but it was too cloudy to see it on the day we were there. 

There were good views of Minato Mirai and Tokyo Bay. 

After lunch we checked out the CupNoodles Museum.  We learned about how the founder of CupNoodles came up with the idea of instant Ramen and made a custom cup of noodles.  After dinner we headed back to Tokyo. 

Tokyo

We have spent the last few days exploring Tokyo.  The picture above is the view out of the window in the hallway of our hotel.

On Monday we took the train to Kawasaki and checked out a Japanese Costco.  We walked outside of Tokyo Station when we transferred from the subway to the train.

Today we checked out some nearby stores, including the Pokemon store and the Disney Store at Shibuya.

The JR trains were having a Pokemon promotion.  When we were transferring trains, we saw a train with Pokemon stickers on it. 

Then we headed to Ueno, and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe at Ueno Station.

We tried to visit the National Museum in Ueno Park, but it was closed.  Normally it is closed on Mondays, but when Monday is a holiday, they close it on Tuesday instead. 

Matsumoto and Kofu

On Sunday, we boarded an express train to Matsumoto, which is a city about 3 1/2 hours northwest of Tokyo, in mountainous region sometimes called the Japanese Alps.

Once we arrived, we caught a bus to the Crow's Castle.  We visited the City Museum, which wasn't real impressive,then walked through the Castle.

The castle was kind of interesting, but it was pretty crowded and had a fairly long wait to go inside.  Still, there were some nice views of the City and the surrounding mountains.  

On the way back to Tokyo, we stopped in Kofu, where we had dinner with a High School classmate of Susan's, who now runs an English school in Japan.

Hotel Asia Center of Japan

We decided to skip anymore sight seeing, and took a cab back to the hotel. We rested a bit, then caught the shuttle back to train station, and boarded a bullet train back to Tokyo. If I had it to do again, I would have spent two nights in Kyoto, and booked a full day bus tour in between.

We took the subway from Tokyo Station to the hotel we would be staying at for a week in Tokyo.  It was located by the Aoyama-itchōme Station, north of Roppongi, west of the Imperial Palace grounds, and east of Shinjuku. 

We chose the hotel because it was the one the University of Portland was using for its Tokyo program. It wasn't a great location, the views weren't great, and the rooms were pretty small and uncomfortable.

Still it was relatively cheap, even though it meant we had to live out of suitcases.

Kyoto

We headed back to the hotel, and decided to walk down the street to find something for dinner.  We ended up at a little Yakisoba restaurant.

There were only about 12 spots in the restaurant, and it was run by an elderly couple.  It was pretty good.

Our hotel was the nicest we stayed in during our trip, but was pretty reasonably priced.  That was probably because our rooms were pretty far from the elevator, and didn't have a view.

The next day, we rode the subway and the train to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, on the western outskirts of Kyoto.  I had seen on a list of 100 places you should see in the world, but it wasn't real impressive either.  Plus it required a lot of walking, and the heat and humidity was pretty bad.

From the end of the Bamboo Forest trail, we hailed a taxi and asked to go to the Golden Temple, Kinkaku-ji. It didn't look too far on the map, but the taxi ride took a fairly long time around lots of narrow twisting roads, and cost about $15. It was nicer than the Silver Temple, but the trails through the gardens were pretty crowded. It is not a place to visit on a Saturday in July.

Train to Kyoto

On Friday we checked out of our hotel and took the train into Tokyo Station, where we caught a bullet train to Kyoto.  

The bullet trains are very nice, spacious and smooth and fast.  They don't turn the trains around at the end of each line, instead the seats are on a swivel and are turned so that they always face forward. Its about 280 miles from Tokyo to Kyoto, but it only took a little over two hours for the bullet trip to get there.

We were hoping to see Mt Fuji from the train as we passed, but it was too cloudy.  We were able to see some of the Japanese countryside, although it went by pretty fast.

When we arrived in Kyoto, we took a shuttle bus to our hotel, the Westin Miyako. Kyoto is a fairly big city, none of the main sites in Kyoto were too close to the hotel, which was on the east side of the city, and we didn't really want to try to figure out the bus or subway system. A reservation is needed to see the Imperial Palace grounds, so we decided to take a taxi to Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion.  We had to walk a couple of blocks up an alley way to get to this Buddhist Temple.

Built in the 15th century by a former Shogun, it had a nice garden and a decent view of Kyoto from the hill above it, but there wasn't anything real impressive about it.

Flavored popcorn and character meets

On Thursday, our last day at Tokyo Disney, we started by heading into Disney Sea to take our picture with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Both Tokyo Disney parks feature flavored popcorn, and we enjoyed sampling the many flavors.  On our last day we made sure we tried the last couple we hadn't had.  And my wife and kids bought more Duffy gear.

After our afternoon break, we headed into Disneyland to ride the last few attractions we hadn't yet.  We also watched the Once Upon a Time castle show, which featured both projections and fireworks.