Day 3 - Even the rain can't stop us

We started our day exploring the area where our hotel is, Shiodome. It’s amazing how much area you can get to here without walking outside.


In another building, there were a series of expensive chairs that were part of an exhibit but weren’t fastened down in any way. We thought that in the states, there’s no way they’d last one hour without someone taking them.


We went into a 7-Eleven, Rob wanted to see if there were any items that would be found in an American 7-Eleven. He found just one.


Mama and I thought it would be fun to take a boat down the river to the temple area, Asakusa, we visited the first day. The boat leaves from a garden right next to the hotel, so we made our way over. There was a funny sign regarding the cats in the park.

Why is poops in red?

It was nice to walk around at see the juxtaposition of the garden with the tall buildings around it.




And I found one of the local cats, who was very friendly and clean. But I didn’t feed him!


There were a group of kindergarten students on a field trip who stopped near us a rolled down a hill. Kids are the same everywhere!


We got on our boat, but it started to rain! But it was still fun to go on the seemingly fast boat down the river.


When we got off the boat, it was POURING. There were two workers from the boat selling umbrellas for 300 yen (about $3.00) so we bought them quickly.


Luckily, we found a soba restaurant that had the craziest ordering system – you bought a ticket from a vending machine and then you went to the counter to get your food. I guess it saves mistakes made from miscalculations. We went up to the second floor, ate, and sent the dirty dishes down the dumbwaiter.


We got to the temple and there were plenty of tourists still around.


There were many students on their graduation trips traveling in packs as well.

He’s too cool for school. ☺

We all got our fortunes (except Mama) from the fortune stand next to the temple. I got a great fortune, Rob got a “Bad Fortune Lack”, but Huay got the worst fortune ever!

If you don’t want the bad luck to follow you, you tie your fortune and leave it there.


The rain stopped so we went to go see some architecture and walked the area between Ueno Park and Nippori. Mama went off on her own to go meet a friend for dinner.

A concert hall by a student of Le Corbusier.

A cemetery of vassals of a Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, who killed themselves when he passed away.

Interesting house.

If one bike falls, do the rest go down like dominoes?

I wanted to head to Nippori to see Nippori Textile Town, an area for buying fabric. We only had the strength to see one shop – Tomato.


After going back to the hotel and resting, we went to Ginza and headed to the flagship Muji store, where Huay and I shopped and Rob became bored. Until he saw that they had a full mock-up of one of their pre-fab houses, and I proceeded to try to translate words like “modular” and “panelized construction” to the incredibly nice employee at the display. I made Rob give him one of his business cards, and as we were leaving, the nice young man rushed to his wallet and gave him one of his. Such a nice cultural exchange!

Happy shoppers.

We ended the day by walking down to the main street of Ginza and reveling in the light show of all the buildings.


Day 4 - We see temples and Rob gets so much attention we are interviewed for a TV show!