Journey to the Olympics 2012 and other fun trips!: Tokyo

As we woke this morning at 6am the skies were clear and from the 29th floor it looked beautiful. Vongfong played nice with us, moving over during the overnight hours impacting us only a little yesterday and leaving today a bit windy, but nice. Our fears of a totally rainy day we not realized.

We hopped aboard a bus for our day tour of the city. We first went to the Meiji Shrine which is a Shinto shrine. It was fascinating to learn about the Shinto and Buddhist religions. The shrine was really neat. Everyone is supposed to wash their hands, and mouth before entering. They had a location where everyone could do this, it was neat.

We learned the difference between the two religions in Japan, Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto is connected with nature and they believe that the gods are in the mountains, large natural things. They believe in their ancestors, eat. There are over 8 million deities. When you want to get their attention to listen to your wish you throw a coin in to get their attention, bow twice then clap twice. Then say your wish and clap one last time. Buddhism gives an understanding for life after death. Shinto only deals with current lives. At a Buddhist temple you also throw a coin, but then you bow and say a phrase then your wish and bow. I think I recalled that right. I may be incorrect in some sections, but it's close. Then the guide said they are all instant Christians at Christmas. Most japanese people are both Shinto and Buddhist.

Next we went to the imperial place bridge. The imperial palace is where the Emperor lives and the bridge is where they cross to exit to the city.

Later we went to Asakusa a Buddhist temple. It was very neat a but more ornate than the Shinto shrine. We got our fortunes. The available fortunes come in good, medium and bad fortunes. You give some money and shake a container until a stick with a symbol comes out. You then match up the symbol to get your fortune. I got a medium fortune, Travis got a bad fortune. You leave your bad fortunes in the temple for the spirits to take away, so Travis did that.

There is a lot of shopping near Asakusa, but we mainly looked. Next we went to lunch and then to a man made island of reclaimed land, Diaba. Diaba is a higher tech area, but we mainly just walked around.

We finished our day at the Ginza a higher end shopping area. We went into a department store that had a huge food market on the basement floors and then two floors of restaurants on the top floor.

It was a full day in Tokyo and we enjoyed ourselves.