Our weekend in Tokyo -Pictures!

 It's been two weeks since the last post, and if you remember, Carmon and I were celebrating our first year of marriage at the time and we did more than just draw pictures of turtles! We actually took a weekend trip to Tokyo and had a blast.
So for today's post, instead of witty banter, I've decided to just pick out a handful of photos that I thought might help me show some of our past two weeks together.

Not two weeks ago. Yesterday.
And maybe the day before that, too.

Anniversary week in Tokyo

We really didn't have all that much on our agenda except to find our hotel and go to the Blue Note Jazz Club. We managed both. 

Our hotel was located in the Shibuya District which hosts the worlds most famous - and busiest- intersection.  

It's a hodgepodge of pedestrians, sounds, smells, noise, advertisements, and at least 6 intersecting lanes. It's a wild site to see, like a PF Chang-themed Time Square. 

Our Hotel

From the intersection our hotel was about a 15 minute walk. The APA Hotel...about $130 a night for a higher-middle class hotel.

It wasn't a bad hotel. It wasn't the best I've ever been at either. The room was... small. It was super small. I guess in Tokyo they don't have the luxury of offering human sized bedding. No worries, it was clean, it was at a great location and we were even lucky enough to get room 911.  Nothing more comforting than being in room 911 in a tall building in a foreign city and in a country thats on red-alert from neighboring nuclear threats. But hey! It's our Anniversary, and 911 is really just one of my best friends birthdays. So yay! 

Also, interesting fact about Japan. When you get in trouble and need the police or ambulance or fire department or whatever, you don't call 911, you call 119. Seriously. 

  AND there was Complimentary Origami Cranes!

So the next day the two of us got up early and, upon the suggestions of friends, made our way towards Yoyogi Park. At first I was kind of unexcited about the idea of going to a park IN TOKYO. I mean, it's like, "Come on! Let's check out the city!" But, it proved to be an awesome experience and if you ever get to go to Tokyo go check it out. 

It was about an hour walk so we stopped a few places for breakfast and coffee. 

...would still rather have Daylight. 

...would still rather have StarBucks. 

On our way to the park we passed this cool little cloth/sewing/material place. It caught our eye and we have a friend that's super good with crafts so we found some cool Japanese materials to send her way. 

Yoyogi Park

Eventually we made it to the park and got to see a lot of fun things. It was a cool park and featured an  extremely large wooded running trail with a pond in the middle of it. There were also a ton of dance groups, music groups, and toddler-fun groups to observe and snoop on. 

No big deal. I can do that. 

Have I ever mentioned how cute Japanese children are?

Well, they are.

CUTE

DOUBLE CUTE

Ok, moving on. 

Other than cute kids there were plenty of other things to take photos of. Like random musicians playing in the park. 

It was, in fact, a Saturday.

Connected to the park is an old (but renovated?) temple. Not knowing much about it, we followed the crowds of people traveling towards it.

"What do they got in there, King Kong?"

Before we made it all the way down to the temple we found some special garden that looked interesting. It was only $5 so we thought, "why not". I'm glad we did.
Because you had to pay, it wasn't crowded and we were able to see a few cool things. 

 The garden was actually connected with the Temple we'd soon visit- Meiji Temple. There was a small little house in the middle of it all that was primarily for drinking tea. There's probably a Japanese name for all this but I couldn't read the descriptions so I'm giving it my best shot!
We also found this wild Raccoon-Dog. The Japanese call it "Tanuki," and although it's famous for it's mystical powers and good fortune they're actually rarely ever seen outside of zoo's.

                     Lucky us!

Apparently this was some holy water well that does something special. Again, I can't read Japanese, but there was a guard right there by it and people were waiting in line to wash their hands with the water. We followed suit. 

I still don't understand why there was a guard there. Maybe they don't want us drinking the water. It might be too holy, you know, like an Indian Jones movie or something. 

"He chose...poorly."

MEIJI TEMPLE

We arrived just in the nick of time to see a a traditional Japanese Wedding in progress. It was a great opportunity because Carmon's really been wanting to witness one but we had no idea where or how we'd do that. Well, it was a lot easier than we thought. We just walked right in on it. 

After that, we still had the whole afternoon ahead of us before we had to be at the Blue Note.

We pretty much just walked around aimlessly and came across a lot of random and fun things like a parade full of ornamented elderly people dancing and a TGIF that gave me the best burger I've had in Japan so far, PLUS FREE REFILLS! 

After burgers, we ended up walking towards the "Sky Tree". It's the second tallest structure in the world and the tallest tower. We thought that might be cool to check out so we head that way.

It's that tall one in the distance. 

On our way there we came across a little dog that reminded Carmon of her dog (a much younger version) she left back in Oklahoma- Joey. 

The tower about 8 blocks away...

Well it turned out that Carmon and I weren't the only tourist in Tokyo that wanted to see the largest tower in the world, and, despite our love of heights, we didn't really care to wait in line for 3 hours. So we settled for the mall at the base of the tower.

"She's so high..."

...like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite.

After what would have been our Tower visit, we jumped on a train and got all fancied up for our date night at the Blue Note.

Just a bit about the Blue Note Tokyo. If the name sounds familiar that's because its cousin is New York's Blue Note Jazz Club. The Tokyo club was opened up in 1988, seats about 300 people and is considered the best place for live jazz music in the city. The night we were there we had floor seating (in perfect view of the drummer) to watch "the Super Salt Band"- or as the Japanese say, "the su-pa salto ban du".

We had a fantastic, jazz-filled, romantic evening. The perfect way to celebrate our first year together!

After the show, we blew some money on shirts and stuff (sorry dad, they barely had MY size) and explored more of the Shibuya night scene.

The next morning we shopped around, ate some delicious food and took a train back home. All in all, it was a great weekend. Other than the club, we didn't have any plans and that made Tokyo easier to just take in and enjoy.

I feel like this is kind of an anti-climatic and abrupt ending to tonights post so sorry about that. Maybe this will soften it.

Yes, that IS a "cute old couple crossing" sign.