25.11.26 - Tokyo

Today is Tokyo day! Well, of a few Tokyo days. We're visiting the Imperial Palace East National Gardens. This is another great place to walk around that doesn't feel busy once your within the gates. When we first walked up to the entrance, there was a long line of people and I thought, oh no...But it was actually because they check everyone's bags before entering. It is the imperial palace grounds after all. But that's a pretty quick process and once you're through that, it opens up to the garden grounds. It's a sprawling area so although people funnel through initially, once it opens up it almost feels quiet and peaceful for most of it. Unfortunately to be able to see the palace itself, that is by guided tour only. I think it would be cool to see the palace, although definitely make an online reservation in advance if possible - the line for the tour was very long way before the registration opened. Admission to the gardens is free so it's an easy in-and-out.

I couldn't pick just a few nice pictures so here's a photo dump of all of them.

It's an absolutely beautiful day today with zero clouds. Very nice for picture taking!

Leaving the gardens, we pop back out into downtown Tokyo and are extremely impressed. Downtown is super clean and surprisingly quiet! No honking or loud traffic noise even though cars are passing every which way. It's really quite amazing. And trees! I love the fact that although there are highrises everywhere, trees are planted in front of almost every building.

We're staying to get hungry which can quickly lead to hangry, so we head to Takashimaya Nihombashi to see what lunch places they have. Mom picks an Indian restaurant on the 7th floor of the Main Building called Old Delhi. It's a tiny place that doesn't look like anything amazing, but it is. The butter masala and vegetable curry is absolutely delicious, the sides that come with it the set are delicious, and the naan is so soft and the rice perfectly cooked. I was very impressed and it didn't look like a lot of good, but I couldn't finish my plate even though I seriously wanted to!

This Takashimaya store...FANCY. Everything is so high-end and nice that I don't even want to breathe on anything. It sometimes feels very intimidating. The only thing I don't like about these types of stores is the customer service is too good. Sounds weird to say that, but when I go into a store I want to be able to browse the selection of goods without an employee watching my every move to see how they can assist me. Call me crazy, but I like to be left alone unless I need help and ask for it. But everyone at these stores is so very nice so if you like top notch customer service, this is your place to be.

Now to find Boul'Ange which has a store across the street from another department store called Mitsukoshi (Nihombashi location). We almost miss it because this Boul'Ange is also in another department store called Coredo...geez all these department stores. Hard to choose from all the goodness, but we manage to pick just a few items before heading over to Mitsukoshi.

Now, if you thought Takashimaya was fancy...Mitsukoshi is even more fancy. As an example, the store on the corner where we enter? Hermes. Need I say more? Everything is marble and chrome and shiny things. But we head straight down to the basement for the food. And boy it's pretty. Mom describes it as Charlie and the golden ticket winners entering the chocolate factory for the first time and being gobsmacked. That's pretty accurate here. All this to say, it's a very nice food area. The options are, of course, overwhelming and it's hard to choose what to get for dinner, but we find a few things to try.

It's nearing 3:00pm by the time we're back to our digs so we call it an early night, with the exception of picking up more breakfast groceries for the next few days. We pickup a persimmon to try (only ¥200) which was pretty good and a pomelo-grapefruit cross called melo gold, also a winner. I didn't think we'd be so lucky with good fruit in November, but I've been proven wrong!

Sayonara!