Long Winters Break- Off to Tokyo

As I mentioned in another post SAS gives 3 weeks off for winter break.  Following our Christmas cruise we still had 2 weeks off.  I knew that would be too much time hanging out at home, so I had planned to bring the girls to Tokyo for a few days.  Tokyo was Jen's number one destination while living here.

The US Military has a hotel in Tokyo and guess what, they had rooms available the week we were hoping to take our trip.  I had heard that in Japan they rarely use English, so staying at an American hotel would make the trip so much easier.

I met with a wonderful woman at the concierge desk who helped get us set up for our first two days of fun.  She suggested some places to see and she had perfect suggestions.

We first ventured to Harajuku.  This area in Tokyo has been hyped in America through Gwen Stefani's songs Rich Girl and Harajuku Girls.  This area sure lived up to the expectations.

There were tons of street stores selling selling clothes, backpacks, shoes, and Japanese trinkets.  Harajuku is known for teenagers hanging out dressed up like Japanese comics.  They wear flamboyant clothes and the girls often have blue or pink hair in long pigtails.  A surprise for us were crepe shops all along the main shopping drag.  The dessert crepes looked good but we weren't about to try the tuna fish crepe (see number 42 in the photo below)!

The concierge also suggested we head to Kiddyland- a toy store but it was more than an Toys-R-Us.  It was  5 floors of toys, stuffed animals, character plastic wear, clothes, stationery, and all sorts of items to go along with various characters like Hello Kitty.  The girls are fans of a character Rilakkuma- a cute bear.  We ended up staying here quite a while and even made a second trip on our last day.

 Following Harajuku we headed to Shibuya which is the Times Square of Tokyo.  We got there just as the sun was setting so you can see the crowds on the streets and then the town in lights.  We went into  building 109 that was a mall that happened to be having a HUGE sale- all the sales girls were just outside their stores with mega phones- I assume shouting to come in and check out their sales.  It was so crazy and fun to see.

The next day we headed to Tokyo Disneyland.  The park was exactly like Disney World, except, we thought we'd see many different nationalities like you do in the US, but most of the attendees were Japanese.  We laughed to ourselves as the Winnie the Pooh ride had Pooh telling his story in a strange voice speaking Japanese.  We also noticed they omitted Piglet from most the story and highlighted rabbit- I assume rabbits are a more accepted animal than the pig.

 Our last day I brought the girls to see some Temples.  Ironically this area was the most touristy area we visited.  There were tons of souvenir stores all around the temples and we saw people from all different nationalities here.  All store fronts had signs in English welcoming patrons.

 The restaurants were tourist friendly too (ie spoke English) so we stopped in a sushi place for a bite to eat.  We have missed Sweet Ginger in Vienna (the sushi rolls in Singapore always have mayo in them- YUCK). We weren't sure about Japan so we opted for some nigiri instead.  It was good, but we all still love Sweet Ginger the best.

The trip was a complete success.  We can cross one more area off our "TO VISIT" list!