tokyo

wheeeere do i have to go, to find a honey with a little soul?

TOKYO.

after more than a month of traveling, i'm ready to sort through those 1300 photos and talk about our adventures. 

we like to maximize our flying...like if you have to stop through tokyo on your way to america for christmas, why not go to disneyland? we decided 3.5 days was perfect to skim the top of japan's largest metropolis, and we could have stayed for much longer. 

 i loved the hustle and bustle of the city amidst throngs of people clad in black. nate has traveled to tokyo before, so luckily we had some sense of the city. everybody seemed to be in a hurry all the time. our friends warned us, but looking at a map of the subway system made me want to cry. it's crazy. some of my favorite things about japan were the heated toilet seats, and the pure, delicious tap water. and what's not to love about japanese food?

 we flew in at night, found tempura for dinner, and woke up early the next morning for a day at disneysea (a sister park to disneyland). it was sunny and freezing. we got suckered into buying those ridiculously priced minnie mittens for sage because we were so ill-prepared for the cold. we each have one coat (and i only have one pair of jeans), so if it looks like we wore the same thing for a month during our travels to cold places...hah! we did. the rest of our winter apparel is somewhere in a storage unit across the world.

we loved the park, with things like king triton's kingdom and a whole city of agraba. we were amazed at how almost everyone there rocked disney gear, from furry mouse ear hats to donald duck purses.

nate made me be a stalker and take this sub-par photo because this kid was waddling around in a donald duck suit and had a MICKEY FACE shaved into his one-year-old head. that is serious disney love.

our favorite thing was the double decker carousel in agraba. sage and nate rode a camel, and i rode the genie. please...horses?

too bad this turned out blurry, but this photo epitomizes traveling with a white baby in asia. we do lots of this. i secretly wanted one of those cheetah mickey hats as a souvenir.

the tsukiji fish market is famous for the freshest of fresh sushi. and since your meal was literally caught a few hours ago, it is the most tasty, quality fish. we didn't go at 4am for the true fish market experience, but instead headed over for lunch. we waited about 45 minutes in line for a famous sushi bar (each sushi place seats about 12 people at a time)...until a harried little woman came out and shouted "three hours!" yeah, no thanks. we found another tiny place around the corner that nate had been before. 

coming from a girl who didn't venture outside a california roll until college, i could eat this fresh fish every day. it melts in your mouth. i have been converted to sashimi, but i could still pass on the fish eggs. good thing sage ate mine for me.

after checking out the shopping and pastry scene in the ginza area, we headed to asukasa in search of a chef's knife. we stopped at the senso-ji temple first:

we'd heard that all the best kitchen and knife shops were over here, but we didn't find a thing. instead, we wandered the quiet streets. i actually loved seeing "real" tokyo...tiny garages, tiled apartment buildings, locals stopping for a steaming bowl of noodles, bicycles parked everywhere. 

and then we were freezing, so we paid $7 for a hot chocolate at a local place called starbucks.

 next on our list was shibuya, the times square of tokyo, except it feels even bigger and brighter than times square. when the walking lights turn green, it's a pedestrian scramble--hundreds of people crossing all different streets.

my brother ate these curry buns as a missionary in japan, so we tried them in his honor. we finally found our chef's knife at tokyu hands, an eclectic department store where you can surely find anything you're ever looking for.

we went to get crepes in harajuku on our last day, and checked out the street scene. harajuku is renowned for its unique street fashion, and on sundays, all kinds of characters come out. i was too busy chasing a toddler to snap photos, but we saw some gems.

sage flashed plenty of this to whoever would look her way.

our last stop was a visit to meiji shrine and yoyogi park. the long walk through sun-lit trees was peaceful. sage picked up every leaf, rock, or stick she saw. the trail felt oddly like the pacific northwest, and i had to remind myself we were actually in japan.

nate granted my wish for a bowl of fresh noodles as our last tokyo meal, then we were on our way to america. 

i really love the japanese culture. i think we need to plan a ski trip here next...