Tokyo and Shinjuku

Today we met up in the morning and headed to Tokyo. There we headed to the Imperial Palace and a bunch of parks in the area. It was cool walking around there cause I hadn't been to Higashi park before. We also visited a Crafts Gallery nearby. From there we went a little further to Japan's controversial Yasukuni Shrine where people who died in the war including war criminals are enshrined. The yearly visits by the previous Prime Minister Koizumi would often create political tension between Japan, China, and sometimes Korea.

After Yasukuni we headed to a nearby Ramen shop for lunch and then stopped at the National Museum of Modern Art. From there we headed to the nearest station and returned to the room where we rested for an hour before venturing out again.

This time it was night and had cooled down a bit compared to the day. We took the Yamanote to Shinjuku and headed to Tsuchiya's where we got some good Okonomiyaki and Yaki Soba. It was a place that I would sometimes get takeout from when I lived there in 2005 and the guy there remembered me.

From there we headed to the Metropolitan Government Building which was busier than usual. I guess a tour bus of Koreans was dropped off there cause the line, the elevator, and 45 stories up at the top was almost all Korean people.

After that we headed to the NS building near by cause it provides a cool view of the city from it's glass elevator that goes up 30 stories. The inside of the building is hollow and is naturally lit during the daytime through the glass ceiling. It also has a huge clock that is quite memorable.