Tokyo Hooters

While the East Coast has weathered earthquakes and hurricanes, we here in Tokyo experienced "Friendship Day" and a parade.  First Friendship Day... this is an annual event which brings about 4,000 people onto the U.S. Embassy compound for food, drinks, music and other assorted activities.  It's billed as a way to open up the Embassy to the community and features a number of local vendors with tons of food.  And to my surprise, the girls from Hooters (Tokyo Style) made an appearance.  It actually ended up being a fun event.

On Sunday there was a parade for who knows what on the street right out in front of our church.  We hung around for a little while and got some interesting pictures.  There was even a Metlife blimp covering this parade from the sky, but we still have no idea what the parade was celebrating.

Tokyo Tower and Tourist Faux Pas

Tokyo was rainy over the weekend, which actually cooled things down and allowed us to get out and walk around without nearing heat exhaustion.  On Saturday we took the metro to an area east of where we live and decided to walk back home, exploring as we went.  The first thing we came to was a great park with a huge Buddhist temple, statues, a few stray cats, and some really strange miniature statues.  (An aside:  a few summers ago I was touring a small town in Malaysia and saw, to my surprise, a parade complete with a marching band coming down the street.  I was surprised at how random it seemed and decided to take some pictures.  Well, as the parade went by I realized I had been taking pictures of a funeral procession.)  Ok, back to the miniature statues... after we took a few pictures of these little guys, we figured out that they are most likely grave markers.  Woops!

Next we stopped at Tokyo Tower, which looks to be as big as the Eiffel Tower (only in red and white with cell phone antennas galore) and is complete with a beer garden, an aquarium, and one really strange looking mascot with a band-aid on his head (don't ask why... we don't get it either).  Ok, more next week.

Week Two - Wait, how much?!

At the end of week two, we've finally defeated jet lag and tried a few more restaurants in the neighborhood... many of which we still can't get over the menu prices.  With the current US Dollar to Japanese Yen exchange rate, it's difficult to finish dinner (for just the two of us) under $50... and we're not even venturing into the fancy places.

But, what has really boggled our minds is the price of some fruit we found at a specialty French grocery store.  Now, first we must say that normal fruit at any grocery store isn't going to run you nearly this much, but we guess there's something special about this particular fruit... we just don't want to pay to find out what.  So, if you look at the pictures below, you'll see the cantaloupe for 7,000 Yen (at the current exchange rate of 1 USD to 76 Yen) that's $92!  And the grapes are the same price!!!  That must be some really good fruit!

The other pictures you see are of the Meiji Shrine and one of it's temple doors in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo.  This is the same place we took the picture of the entrance last week, except we ventured past just the entrance this week.  We braved the heat and humidity, saw how beautiful this shrine is, and learned that it is still used today for many wedding ceremony processions.

More to come next week.  :)

Our First Week - Fighting Jetlag

Although we're fighting jetlag this first week, we thought we'd share a few pictures that we snapped this weekend of Ginza (the shopping district), the Meiji shrine (the Meiji was the current emperor's great-grandfather - more pictures to come since it was way too hot to continue walking), and some yummy Japanese food (or at least yummy to someone).

Promise to add more pictures soon as we find our way around.