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Speaking of a tower in Tokyo, you can now purchase one of these crazy looking cheeseburgers at Lotteria for only 100 yen per slice of cheese and hamburger patty. I haven’t sampled one, and don’t plan to, but the three or four burgers I have eaten in Japan have all been fantastic. Of course I didn’t eat any of them at Lotteria, McDonald’s, etc. either.
After countless photos from a distance, I finally got close enough to the Tokyo Tower to take some pictures from the base. Tokyo Tower is the place that some tourists spend their first day in Tokyo at, but I didn’t visit it until about my 900th day in the area. I still haven’t gone up the elevator (and don’t plan to either).
The structures that “got in the way” were either part of 心光教院 or 瑠璃光寺. I don’t remember which. Maybe one from each, although I doubt it.
Two creatures which are rather rare to spot in the U.S.A. but which can be found in nearly every body of water in Japan are koi (carp) and kame (turtle). This turtle was balancing precariously on a rock, perhaps posing to try and get in some pictures as the irises were stealing all of the glory on this day.
After getting our fill of Horikiri Shobuen (堀切菖蒲園), we walked across the way for some taiko drumming.
Crank it up and enjoy!
I saw on the news that Tokyo Tower was being lit blue to support Japan’s soccer team during the World Cup. While in Roppongi last night I confirmed that news report with the above photo.
How will the “Samurai Blue” do against Paraguay?
While on our walk in Niiza, we were becoming a bit hungry when we saw the above building in the distance. “Great,” we thought, “a few sushi pieces and we’ll be good to go until lunch.”
When we got closer, we realized that this was no ordinary kaiten sushi place. Not only can you get sushi off of a conveyor belt here, you can also get it to go or get it through the drive through!
Drive-through restaurants aren’t nearly as common in Japan as they are in the U.S.A. Above is a photo of the menu.
On a hot and humid night earlier this month we headed to the Park Hyatt Tokyo in Shinjuku. We had lunch there once before, but this was our first time taking in the night view from the top. This hotel was the setting for Lost in Translation starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.
We went to the New York Grill on the 52nd floor initially. When we found out there was a 2,200 yen (about $25) cover charge each, we opted for The Peak Lounge on the 41st floor instead.
The above photo was the view from our table. This is facing north. You can see Shinjuku Chuo Park in the center and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to the right.
We walked back to Shinjuku Station a little after 11 p.m. Part of the west side of the station was filled with homeless people sleeping side by side, many with boxes over their heads to keep out the light and noise. I’ve seen plenty of homeless people before, but this was most unusual. There were dozens of them lined up in neat rows with hundreds of waking people walking down the aisles between them that they had left for us to get back inside the train station.
I took this picture with my TZ10 and left the shutter open for 8 seconds.