Adam and I celebrated our one year anniversary on August 7th. We bought a one day pass for all the metro lines and just made our way around Tokyo. In the subway stations there was this sign showing the date for the day, so after several attempts we captured ourselves with it. This is the day the camera battery died, so these blackberry pictures will have to do....
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| Happy Anniversary |
We started the morning off in the Harajuku area. We were walking around looking for somewhere to eat breakfast when we came across a long line. I thought for sure the people were waiting for a new anime comic to come out or for the release of concert tickets for some famous Japanese pop band. But, we followed the line to its source to find that they were waiting for brunch at Eggs and Things, a Hawaiian themed breakfast joint. Really?? Alas, we decided to employ our rule of restaurant choice by what seems most popular. The line moved quickly but we ended up waiting for about 45 minutes. Once we finally sat down, we ordered their specialty - pancakes with about 6 inches of whipped cream along with strawberry, vanilla, and maple syrup! It was quite a treat!
After that we explored Harajuku, an area known for its youth street fashion where you will often see young people dressed in everything from gothic and punk to anime characters. We strolled Takeshita shopping street, flowing along with the busy sea of people. It is a haven for fashion savvy teens and most of the prices were catered to them. There were even several second hand stores selling both unique and major brand name goods.
Next, we made our way to the other shopping street in the area, Omotesando. This area has recently seen a rise in upscale fashion stores and is sometimes called Tokyo's Champs-Elysees. We saw basically every luxury brand on a beautiful boulevard with wide sidewalks and shady trees. We set out to find one specific Prada store. The 6-story Prada store is housed in a building designed by same guy that designed the Bird's Nest in Beijing - super trendy! It was pretty cool!
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| Prada store |
From there were headed over to the city center to what Adam read to be the biggest flea market in the city. We didn't really see anything that caught our eye, only this woman doing business on her iPad among the Japanese artifacts. We shouldn't be surprised... the Japanese are totally techie!
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| iPads are everywhere! |
This became very clear when we traveled up to Akihabara to visit the largest store of the famous electronics departement store, Yodobashi. It shouldn't be surprising as Japan is home to many of the most common electronic brands, Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, and the list goes on. It was truly overwhelming! The prices were not any cheaper than US, so we just looked around in amazement of all the products and people.
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| 8 story electronic store |
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| bright lights, bright colors, lots of shoppers! |
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| the floor map! exhausting just reading it! |
As we made our way out of Yodobashi, we barely made it across the street into McDonald's before the skies let loose. We holed up in the seating area on the 2nd floor looking out the windows at the pouring rain! Although disappointing, we grabbed a happy tummy snack and planned our next move!
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| My first McDonald's in Asia! |
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| Happy Anniversary at MickeyDee's :) |
After a few other stops, we ran across this indoor soccer field in the middle of the city area. They were playing 4v4 and having a great time. It was such a cool spot right in the middle of neighborhoods, shops, and restaurants. It made me miss soccer even more... Can't wait to be back in the US!
Overall, we had a great trip to Tokyo. It was a special place and we will never forget our first anniversary!
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