Japan Day 2!

Tokyo day 2

            Originally our must do in Tokyo was to go to the fish market which you have to get there before 5am to get in line and then you must be the first 125 people to get there in order to watch the fish auction. Unfortunately due to the extreme late nights we never made it to the fish market but I heard it was pretty cool to see.

            In the morning we got up and found a Starbucks for a quick breakfast and made our way to the Imperial Palace. I know what your thinking, Starbucks? Well with a group of 7 girls who all have different tastes for food and we needed something quick, Starbucks was the solution. Plus many Japanese people don't have our kind of breakfast; like cereal, pancakes, eggs, they tend to have foods like sushi and the miso soup for breakfast.

            So we hopped on the subway to the Imperial Palace, which we didn't know exactly what to expect but you cant go in the Palace but you are allowed to see it from a far. While we were walking up towards the Palace we saw many police bikes and black cars with flags coming from the Imperial Palace so we might have seen someone important leave the Palace but we have no idea who. It was still cool though. The Imperial Palace is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan and is surrounded by a moat. The palace is closed to the public except for each New Year on January 2 and for the Emperors Birthday

            After seeing the Imperial Palace we went to find lunch. We were in more of the business area of Tokyo so there weren't many attractions but we found this sushi restaurant that was probably one of my favorite places I ate in Japan. You walk in and it is very small, it is like a bar set up, mainly because there aren't many people who eat in groups so they make a lot of space for individuals to eat. So all 7 of us girls were able to fit, pretty much taking over the little restaurant. We had no idea what to expect because we just sat down but there was no menu. What ended up happening was that it was a 8 or 9 course meal that everyone gets and is made literally right in front of your eyes. Our chief was very nice and understanding that we didn't know Japanese and that this was so new to us. It started out with this little cup of soup which smelt really strange but tasted so good! I have no idea what it was but I really liked it. Then we got about 7 or 8 single pieces of shashimi that were all different given to us one by one. He would make one piece, put it on this little plate, we would eat it and then a few minutes later we would get another piece. I tried everything, there were a few thigns that were new like sea eurchin, which I did not like and neither did anyone else and I had a fish liver which almost tasted like a muscle. One of the girls Kelly put the sea eurchin in her mouth and just couldn't swallow it so she just held it in her mouth not knowing what to do for a good 5 minutes and the guy saw what she was doing and was so nice to get her a towel to spit it out. It was hilarious, even the guy laughed with us. At the end of our meal we got a little square of a cake/dessert and then 3 strawberries, which were delicious. Strawberries were in season at this time so they were so good! Afterwards we so absolutely stuffed and hopped back on the subway to the Harajuku district.

            Harajuku was much more of a shopping area but there wasn't a whole lot of exciting things because it was pretty mainstream. I went to forever 21 to get a few things that I had forgot. What I did find cool was that they were having the LAFORET GRAND BAZAR which was a shopping building filled with little boutiques and it was like our Black Friday where things were 40-70% off and their were people with mega phones trying to get people to come into their store and some even you had to wait to get in because they had a limit of the amount of people who could be in so they used a large fishing net to block the opening of the store. It was pretty fascinating because the Japanese people I had encountered were very quiet but here they were very loud.

            After we got our things at Forever 21 many of the girls were exhausted so we made our way back to the hotel so everyone could just relax for an hour. Once we were hungry again many of the girls just wanted something a little more familiar to them so we found this cute little Italian place where we feasted on about 5 pizzas and so much pasta. Japanese food is really good but sushi doesn't necessarily fill you up and keep you full for the day. Once we finished dinner we went back to the hotel where everyone got ready to go out to the clubs and bars but I decided the stay in for the night and watch a movie because going out and getting wasted with people who I am still getting to know just isn't my thing. Unfortunately though I was woken up every other hour when people stumbled back in so my plan of getting some sleep still didn't work.

            Once we all woke up again we packed up our things, made our last minute phone calls through viber, which works with wifi and then we made our way to my favorite city, Kyoto.