Tuesday, August 9. We got up, checked out of the hotel, and went to Sis. Kikuchi's house, where Lisa got a trim at her hair salon. Then we headed to the train station to begin the trek back to Tokyo. Trains were pretty crowded, probably due to people coming back from the Tanabata Matsuri in Sendai, but we got some seats on the Shinkansen and headed south.
Later that evening we made it back to Obaachan's house, and met up with Rachel and Andrew, who got to Japan Sunday night. It was really cool having everybody all together again for the first time in over three years!
Tuesday we went to Sarue Park to take some family photos to commemorate the reunion.
Then we got on the train and took the short hop to the Tokyo Skytree.
The area around the Sky Tree is built up with kind of a mall, with restaurants and a bunch of shops. Many of them are kind of like high-end modern traditional Japanese -- fans and woodblock prints and cloth and such, all very nice. It would be fun to take a half a day just to peruse the shops instead of just wandering through. Here is one example -- a shop that creates candy art. (The only problem with this is, it looks way too good to eat!)
We made it through that area and to the Skytree itself.
What an amazing structure! What a lot of design and welding and riveting went into this!
The lobby had some artistic representations of the Skytree.
Waiting in line... it was summer vacation in Japan, so it was pretty crowded.
Cut glass "fireworks" in the elevator.
We just went up to the lower observation deck. At 350 meters (about 1150 feet, or 105 stories), it's a bit over halfway up. There is another observation deck at 450 meters; someday when the weather is clear it would be nice to go up there. The weather wasn't clear -- it was too hazy to see as far as you could from 350 meters anyway -- so there wasn't much point in going higher.
This is Obaachan's neighborhood -- nearly every place we go to around her house is in this photo. The large green park is where we took the family photos in the morning. If you know where to look you can see her roof, over near the right.
Zoomed out, you can see down to Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba, through the haze.
Ryogoku, Sumidagawa, Tokyo Tower in the distance.
Shinjuku. Mt. Fuji should probably be back there somewhere in the mist.
We had a good time looking around.
The Asakusa area (see next post).
The glass floor is fun... 1150 feet, straight down!
A closeup of the observation deck (the lower area with three strips of windows).
1 comment:
It's so fun to read about your trip! Great pictures, too! Sounds like you all had a wonderful time!
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