New Years Day

This post is going to be short, but sweet. Well, short at least. New Years Day was one of recovery, we only ventured out to visit one sight while Kelsey stayed in and watched Back to the Future.

We figure since we were in Japan, why not do what the Japanese do? There's some kind of popular phrase about Rome like that. We went to check out the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa and found out that this really is what all the Japanese are doing.

The area we visited is called Asakusa, a pretty cool name which also ends in USA. It is home to a large Japanese brewery called Asahi. I found out later that this picture I had taken is of the Asahi headquarters, where the building on the left (slightly obstructed) is made to look like a mug of frosty ale. There's also a giant yellow blob.

So we made it to the area of the temple and it turned out a few hundred thousand people also wanted to visit that day.

The direct line for the temple was super long. Like three blocks down the row of souvenier shops and then another block or two. PACKED. We snuck down a side alleyway to try to get a peek and found sort of a shortcut to the temple. We got lucky and the traffic controllers let people from the sides in across the main route to go to the shops. We went in there, ducked inside of a shop, and joined the main route. We weren't going inside the temple anyway, so it wasn't that bad of a thing to do. This is a view of the shop alley:

This is one of the impressive temple buildings, but I don't think it's the main one. How's that for informative?

A dog we met along the way:

This was one of my favorites, this 5 story pagoda. Impressive:

We walked up near the temple, then went off to the side because we weren't sure what we would do once inside the temple. It was nice that all along the sides were stands with great Japanese food. By great Japanese food I mean all of the chocolate bananas you could ever want.

Here's one of the non-chocolate banana food stands:

This is a coy pond that I enjoyed:

Well, like I said, this one post is nice and short. I expect the one tomorrow to be more exciting since we went to Tokyo National Museum and the Edo Tokyo Museum. I took about 200 pictures that day so check back tomorrow.

A Japanese New Years Eve

Here we were, New Years Eve, in Tokyo, Japan. Most guidebooks and Japanese tourism experts recommend to travel to Japan pretty much anytime EXCEPT New Years. The reason for this is that New Years in Japan is like Christmas in the States. Everybody is traveling and visiting family, and nothing is open. So yeah, this was the worst time to go to Japan, but it was our only option.

Our New Years Eve started with a trip to Harajuku. This is a place known for trendy clothes shopping and teens that dress in a completely outlandish mismatched style. This is what we were looking for, some of these Harajuku girls, but they didn't seem to come out at all on New Years Eve. There were, however a lot of food stands and a lot of people due to the holiday:

We all treated ourselves to some chocolate bananas, here's Amber and Kelsey obtaining bananas in the background of my delicious white chocolate banana:

There were some really nice side streets with shops and art studios in Harajuku. It was nice to escape the mob of people for a while. Here's Amber, Dave, and Kelsey undernearth a Harajuku archway:

There were some pretty strange, random sightings in Harajuku, including this store display:

For whatever reason there is a store called Condomania in Harajuku:

My dad had to go home due to an oncoming cold, which gave the fish lovers in our family a chance to get some sushi. There was a great conveyor belt sushi shop in Harajuku which was one of the highlights. This restaurant is set up like a bar, except the bar is next to a conveyor belt which brings delicious sushi. I'll talk more about this in an upcoming post devoted to food in Japan.

Harajuku also has a primary shopping street. As you can see, it was really, really ridiculous, so we didn't end up going into any shops. They were all open, though, so it was nice to know that we could have gone. This place which houses an oriental bazaar was closed the entire New Year Holiday, so I think I missed out on some prime souvenier opportunities.

The day was finished in Harajuku and we went back to rest before a New Years Eve celebration. My parents stayed at home and celebrated by resting their feet for a night, but Amber, Dave, Kelsey, and I went out to Rippongi with our Australian friends. Rippongi is home to Tokyo Tower, this giant orange and white tower which held one of the larger celebrations that night.
We made it to the subway stop in Rippongi about ten minutes before midnight, so we didn't have a long time to stake out a good setting. We stopped in front of this large temple area that filled, so we couldn't have gotten in very easily. It left us a good view of the tower, which was nice.

There was a large countdown which we couldn't understand because it was in Japanese, and then at the stroke of midnight everybody in the temple released a white balloon with a New Years wish tied to it. It was a great sight, but didn't show up well on camera.
I did get at least one nice shot in my first photos of 2010:

So that was the end of an entire decade, the zeros or oughts or whatever. Let's hope that the tens are just as great or better. Happy New Year.