Tokyo Saturday

Got up early to head up to Tokyo this morning. Left the hotel at 7am, we ended up getting on the milk run. There are three types of trains on the particular line. A green, red and black car. The green and red as express, that only stop at a few stations. The black is the every stop train. The only appearance difference in the actual trains is what color the city name is on the car. But it was good because the train was pretty empty. Lots of room.

Got up to Akihabara about half an hour before the shops opened. Walked around and checked stuff out. When the shops opened up people just appeared. Every single square inch of the place has a shop in it. Model train shops, electronic shops, and toy stores. After about an hour it was time to move on.

From the Akihabara it was about 20 minutes to the Yasukuni Shrine (Wiki), that is counting train time. The Torri gate at one entrance is steel and weights about 100 tons. The thing is huge. In the back corner of th shrine is a war museum. Pretty interesting place. Unfortunately they did not allow pictures to be taken inside. For every display case there is usually one or two English display boards. All of the items labels are written in Japanese. So it goes pretty quickly. This shrine is very political in its wording. Whenever a Japanese official visits, a bunch of groups protest. It is worth checking out if you are in the neighborhood.

The plan was too check out the palace gardens, but by this time I was ready to get back. This time we hopped on the right train. Much faster. Stopped by the french pastery shop on the way back to the hotel.

Finished up the night by going bowling with a few of the guys. And had a little bit of pizza.

Lots of pictures.