The Saunders Wander

Our first day in Japan was technically rather short - we landed at the Haneda airport in Tokyo around 7pm, then took the monorail and train to Tokyo station from which we could walk to our hotel. We dropped off our things and Charlie miraculously got me to then leave the hotel room to get our first real meal in Tokyo - soba and tempura, and boy was it delicious. After dinner we headed back to the hotel room, showered, and passed out. The first full day we had started early, as expected thanks to jet lag. We took advantage of waking up naturally at 5am to head to the Tsukiji fish market before the crowds - it's bustling bright and early because of the commercial market on the inside, so it's a great first morning activity. On the way to the market we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some breakfast of yogurt, bread, and fruit jello. Unfortunately, it was a dreary day, and at some point it started raining hard enough that we ducked into another convenience store...

We were up early on day 2 thanks to jet lag, and we couldn't get back to sleep so we started out ahead of schedule. Our plan was to go to the Tokyo national museum, which didn't open until 9:30am, but since it was in Ueno park we went to the park and walked around until opening. Once again it was raining, and I was glad to have our umbrellas so that we didn't have to let the rain stop our exploring. We walked to an interesting shrine with what I would describe as a large-scale bonsai tree (clearly made to grow into a circle, but normal tree sized obviously). There was some neat art in the shrine, and more importantly no rain through the roof, so we spent a few minutes there before moving on.       Down the hill from the shrine was a large lake that was absolutely covered in lotus leaves. We were a little too late for the blossoms, but there were a lot of pods to check out, and the leaves were almost as tall as we were off the water.  There is also anothe...

For our third day in Tokyo, we opted for a mix of big city sights, starting with the Tokyo Metropolitan Building's observatory in Shinjuku for a great view of the city. One of the things that's interesting about Tokyo to me is that when you check it out from high up it's still city as far as you can see. The nice thing about the Metropolitan Building is that its observatory is free! They also had a fun little display of the Olympic and Paralympic flags and an Olympic torch in the lobby as part of the hype and run up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. We learned in the exhibit that the medals for the 2020 Olympics are to be made from recycled metals reclaimed from electronics recycling, which I thought was super cool. From Shinjuku, we walked over to the Meiji shrine, via a somewhat circuitous route through some urban neighborhoods. It was actually kind of nice to see the quieter side of the city though (as far as a huge city like Tokyo can be quiet), and get just a...

Once we knew when Cackett would be joining us on this trip, and that we'd have 4 days in Tokyo before he arrived, I started looking into day and overnight trips from Tokyo. I ended up booking a 1-night trip to Nikko, which is a city about 2 hours directly North of Tokyo by Shinkansen and train. While looking for breakfast in Tokyo station to take on the train, we were lucky enough to stumble on a store selling fresh onigiri (rice balls), which had been on Charlie's list of must eat items in Japan, and are one of my favorites as well. Charlie had one with grilled eel and one with tempura shrimp, and I had two with grilled salmon, my absolute favorite. Nikko is a historic area, and its main attraction is a national park with a number of shrines and temples. It is now most famous for Toshogu, which is the resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (this was the final shogunate before the Meiji restoration, and reigned over 250 years of peace i...

Friday morning we woke up in our ryokan, and had a wonderful morning soak before breakfast (did I mention how much I love onsen yet?). Breakfast was yet another adventure, albeit a little bit less so than dinner the night before. The other neat thing about the ryokan is that basically everywhere on the grounds you can wear the yukata (cotton bathrobe) given to you as part of the room, so it makes for a very relaxing experience. Breakfast consisted of salad, common in a Japanese breakfast pretending to be even a little bit western, many small dishes again, and a couple different soups, which were both delicious. There was also natto, which we didn't even bother to open because no one wants to smell that (natto is a fermented soy bean product that smells like everything nasty, is super stringy and slimy, and I never have brought myself to taste it so I can't comment on that bit. It's supposed to be really good for you though...). After breakfast we relaxed in the room a ...

Saturday was one of two sightseeing days we had in Kyoto proper, but since Cackett had just arrived in Japan we didn't want to do anything too strenuous, so we opted for a few good tours of what I think are some must-see places. The first place we headed to was the imperial palace. Unlike the palace in Tokyo, which is the current residence of the emperor, you don't need reservations months in advance for the Kyoto palace tour, and while you can't go inside, I remembered it being a great tour from the last time I was in Japan. The palace sits at the center of Kyoto Imperial Garden, which used to form the outer portions of the imperial compound and consisted of residences of court nobles. When the capital moved to Tokyo, the court noble houses were demolished, and now the outer portions are open to the public as a beautiful park. Within the larger walled park is the smaller (though by no means small) walled palace itself. It's a great opportunity to see tradition...