Japan: The First Full Day

All right now, Japan, first full day. What do we do? How about......a huge department store?How about......a palace? How about....electronics? All right, let's do all of these things. Here are some nice photos of our first full day.

We hiked over to Japan Rail (JR from now on) and headed to Ginza which has these pretty crazy huge and crazy expensive department stores. My family checked out this 8 story department store called Matsuya Ginza. Actually it's 8 stories with a roof garden. I didn't take any photos of the store because I'm always nervous about being suspected as a burglar when I take photos in a department store. Matsuya Ginza had a nice food court in the basement, and plenty of stores through all of the floors, but the best part was near the top where they had selections of Japanese prints and old books. I ended up picking up one print without any real information on it but I'm assuming it's not too rare or valuable because it cost me only 500 yen (roughly $6).

Here's a photo of the area:

From the store it was a quick walk over to the grounds of the Imperial Palace, aka where the Emporer of Japan lives. This next pic is a giant moat that surrounds the grounds:

It was a nice day and a few swans were out. This guy was a beast because he was about five times the size of the ducks in the moat:
Here are Amber and Dave in a candid shot in front of the Statue of Kusunoke. According to Dave, he was the ideal of samurai loyalty.
This is a picturesque view of the imperial residence. I would say I'm proud of the photo but I don't think you could take a bad picture from there:
We walked over to a park with these nice fountains in it. It was a great little park because it was somewhat removed from the big city, yet there were still the giant buildings to enjoy as a backdrop.
I sniped a photo of Amber and Kelsey over Dave's shoulder:
Next we were off to a gargantuan electronics disctrict, Akihabara "Electric Town". This district was basically one huge electronics store after another, which is OK but about a million other people wanted to see it at the same time:
Here's a photo of my mom, probably trying to figure out what some crazy sign says:
The street was also littered with these girls who dressed up costumes like little amine characters and shouted things and tried to hand you paper as you passed by. There were literally dozens of girls doing it that day. I caught this before she noticed me so she wasn't smiling or anything. These girls are getting paid, so obviously they should be smiling constantly!
I did pick up one souvenier from this day. Kelsey and I stopped into this store that sold ridiculously expensive collectible action figures, and they had a bin outside of these plastic bags full of junk. It turned out the junk was discarded happy meal style toys, and you could buy it for only 200 yen. I'll have a picture of it in my post where I show all of my souveniers.

We capped that day off with some delicious Indian food, and I got the amazing mutton curry. Kelsey and I went out later with some Australians we met from across the hall in our hotel. We went out for a few beers and sake and made some new friends. Another great day. Come back tomorrow for a post about Mount Fuji.