Adventures in Tokyo!

Last Saturday we decided to head up to Tokyo and explore some parts of the city that we hadn't seen yet! Our first stop was the Imperial Palace - home of Japan's Emperor and his family. The Palace is right in the middle of the city and it's surrounded by a large stone wall and a moat that are several hundred years old. It was a nice cool autumn day and the leaves were just starting to change colors...so that was fun to enjoy! The actual Palace itself is only open two days a year, so we didn't get to go inside, but we still enjoyed walking around the gardens and the grounds for several hours.

Our next stop was a part of the city known as Odaiba. This part of the city is built on "reclaimed" land (i.e. landfill!!) and you get to it by crossing over Tokyo Bay via the Rainbow Bridge. Odaiba has a bit of an "American" feel to it which is topped off with a good-sized Statue of Liberty replica that stands along the shore. There are lots of shops and restaurants there and we found a delicious Hawaiian burger place for lunch - yum! We were both starved because we had been traveling and walking for most of the day and it was almost 3 o'clock....so a hamburger with avacado and grilled pineapple sounded just right! (even to a girl who is usually afraid of big hunks of meat!) We randomly ran into some of our friends as we were finishing up our meal - which was a fun surprise. After that we walked along the water to watch the sunset and then headed back to our little abode in Yokosuka.