What a Long Strange Trip It's Been, pt 2
2005-08-05,

Tokyo, pt 2

Day two was spent with KBird. After sending her oldest to school, the three of us and her youngest ventured through the metro system and first visited Thunder Gate (yes, that's what it says on the giant red lamp), which is at its front a long line of open air markets, leading to a large Buddhist temple and a number of Shinto shrines. We managed to find an Anpanman item there, as well as try a few local snacky delicacies. There were some cool shrines there, but it felt a little touristy for me. We got a few charms (we were in Japan, how can you not get at least one charm?) for various people that we thought could use one, and I personally wondered what all those people were doing there in the middle of the morning on a weekday. Shouldn't everyone be too busy working themselves to death?

We left the old shrines behind and moved on to the city proper, walking among the trendier areas of Tokyo. Eventually we made our way to a restaurant that, as well as featuring some tasty food items, sported a number of pictures of the only celebrity they had guesting there that we recognized, Stevie Wonder. KB's youngest (who's around 2, I believe) was particularly interested in Mr. Wonder and was fixated on the pictures that happened to be hanging on the wall behind us. Soon enough, it became the Find Stevie Wonder game, each picture having more people in it, had having to pick the visually impaired singer/songwriter out of the crowd. Fun for all ages!

Afterward was a real treat-- a short run through one of Tokyo's famous toy stores, Kiddyland. We were hunting mainly for Anpanman stuff, of course, as well as some Japanese-marked Star Wars stuff for a friend of ours (with Episode III having been just released there recently, there was plenty). There was a life-size Darth Vader made of Lego that lit up and had a voice box inside it spouting the occasional DV catchphrase ("Most impressive..." and the like). There were a number of things we would have gotten, had it not been for that we'd need to be dragging it with us for the next two weeks all over Southeast Asia. Sigh... there's always next time.

Next day was travel day. We had a casual morning with KBird, sampling some items from a local bakery (maple melonpan- yum!) and slowly making our way toward the metro that would take us to the train that would take us to the airport that would take up to Hong Kong. After the flight over the Pacific, you'd think a four-hour jaunt to HK would seem like nothing, but it actually felt like forever. The weather was terrible, so it was pretty much bumps almost the whole way. We could not get off the plane fast enough.

It was dark b the time we reached HK International, and we went straight to our one night at the Regal Airport hotel before meeting up with the rest of the families and our local guides the next morning. Decent enough hotel, and had a cool lobby with a grand piano set up on what looked like a small spaceship. I'll have to post a picture.

I'll leave our journeys in Hong Kong for tomorrow.

-- End Transmission --