Picking up from Day 1, we stayed at our hostel, which was Guesthouse Fete, which was great! For about $168 for 3 nights for the 2 of us, the experience was nice, especially when the staff invited us to make Gyoza! They even made breakfast for us!
So, where does Day 2 take us?
Tokyo Station!
Tokyo Station!
One of the places that I really, really wanted to visit (as I did a brief stint back in December traveling to Kyoto) was Tokyo Station! Tokyo Station, which is the busiest station in Japan, serving over 3,000 trains per day (including multiple Shinkansen), is a site to behold. Before the video, we did do a bit of research to find out more about it, including the fact that the rebuilt domes were similar to the Amsterdam station. We knew a bit about the recent restoration work (thank you NHK and Begin Japanology, but we didn't know more about the early work or how it came to be more modern in the day.
Next: Imperial Palace!
Our next stop was the Imperial Palace, which is a nice stroll from Tokyo Station. The good news is that the stroll was nice, and tickets to visit the Palace are free! The bad news is that the guided tours are only in Japanese, limited to the first 300 people that show up, and are only offered at 8:30am and 12:30pm.
If you don't speak Japanese, arrive at 10:30am or 3pm, or get there a little after 300 people arrive, then you'll just have to come back.
We will have to come back....
Lunch: Shake Shack!
Yes, we found an American chain in Tokyo. Why? We wanted actual burgers!. Yes, our price tag was a bit high (~$50), but it was worth it. We tried to find another restaurant near Tokyo Station, and stumbled on Shake Shack. Needless to say, we made our decision.
The (2nd) Nihonbashi Marker
The actual one was in the middle of the busy road
Nibon....Nihonbabai....Nihonbashi!
Making our trip downtown, we stopped on by the Nihonbashi area. Nihonbashi is famous for its bridge, which is "Mile Marker 0" for pretty much all travel across Japan. Whereas the US has mile markers from and to state lines, Japan's mile markers are from the center of Nihonbashi - specifically, the center mark. While we couldn't get a photo of the actual marker (it was in the middle of a busy road), we did get to see the famous bridges (the actual one, and the 1964 Olympics expansion), and see some of the businesses around the area.
A super-fancy car in a window
Ginza!
We made a brief visit to Ginza, but at this point, we were getting really tired and didn't have a lot of money. It didn't matter anyway - the only shopping we could do in Ginza was window-shop, as most of the things in Ginza are super-super expensive. Regardless, we made our way toward Tsukiji!
Tsukiji?
Yes, the world-famous fish market! Unfortunately, we found out that one one shop we wanted to visit closed super early (like, 10am), so we missed it by a long shot. So....we decided to call it a day. Tsukiji will have to wait.
What's left?
We did stop by Hamarikyu Gardens to see some of the Sakura, which were pretty, but we couldn't explore much of the park because it was close to closing time and we had to leave.
Rounding out the night
Lastly, we made our way back to the hostel and inquired about places to eat (it's Tokyo - where aren't there places to eat?) - specifically, we wanted to know what the staff recommended.
They recommended Toriton, which is a Kaiten-Zushi place (conveyor belt sushi). Even though we arrived pretty close to closing time, they still were able to seat us and let us eat.
