Shibuya

Weird ...just weird...jet lag...it’s the jet lag...

🥴 Most of the food spots that we have stopped at have these wonderful wet cloths to wipe your hands with. These are usually sealed in bags. I woke up at one point last night thinking how long before these dry out? 😂😂😂 oh boy...

🥴 riding the train...we were standing and I looked towards the back of the train. It’s the strangest site to see several cars to the back bending to the right and not in a straight line behind us 😳

View from our room

...we had noticed this film crew filming around the hotel before breakfast so I couldn’t resist taking this shot as we were leaving. He approaches us and I said to him “do you know who I am?” Big joke! We are good friends now! We ended up being interviewed for their show which will air end of Nov on NHK world...Catch Japan! We will most likely be on their cutting floor 😂

Update...apparently this guy is a celebrity in Japan!

Hotel Niwa is very close to the Tokyo Dome .... across this canal

Street across from the Dome where we found a 7-11 with an ATM

The weather is much better today especially for taking pictures. We headed for Shibuya with a side trip to Tokyo station. We wanted to purchase our train tickets to Shuzenji and wander around. Taking the cell phone from our room Brent had plotted out our route and when we surfaced we burst out laughing. There was a sign that said 90 mtres to Otemachi...We had walked for quite a ways from Otemachi to change trains to ride the next leg one stop?

Otemachi in foreground and we came up at the end of this block!

We trundled around for a couple of hours

So many places to eat....and they are all very tiny

This is an actual tour! You dress up and ride around in a go cart!

Sake anyone? Eenie, meenie, miney, mo...

Ilka..they have telephone booths here too! 😂😂😂

Tokyo train station 

Countdown to the Olympics

Now that’s a bonsai

Famous story about this dog.... Hachiko

Huge food fair! There is even Brent killer beer!

It’s Halloween and the sweets are so cute and plentiful 

...one of my favorites 

Shibuya is a shopping meca and there were so many people

...we found a couple of music stores

....and as the light in the sky started to fade

...the lights on the buildings came on!

....Manami met us here in this crazy place and we had a great visit with her and her mom

...love this shot! 

This crazy place was like a mini mall of restaurants. They all compete for your business!

The infamous Shibuya crossing. I took this shot from upstairs of Starbucks. By nightfall the crowds had quadrupled!

....gaaaack! I was never so glad to get out of there!

Update...let’s go to Shibuya...Brent says...now we understand the throngs of people! 

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20191031_40/

Nippori Textile Town

We managed to stay awake last night until 8 ....woke up at 11:30 ...fell back to sleep until 4:10 am what a night! I seem to remember trains in my dreams...lots of trains...🤪

There is a fabulous restaurant in our hotel....a buffet breakfast for 2800 yen per person ($33) very expensive for a buffet but worth it!

This is one of four stations


If one is a fabricholic this is the place to be! I did some research before coming to town and just had to go. There’s quite a few utube videos posted too.

We realized that we have a pass for the metro subway not the JR system which Brent had studied in depth of where we were going before coming. It's back to the drawing board for Brent! The hotel also has a cell phone in our room which accesses the WiFi so we took it with us. Saved our bacon once we came up out of the subway station. 

Yup...clear as mud..

It’s a rainy day which doesn’t help when one has to walk another 15 min to the infamous textile town

There are about 80 shops on this street. This is about one third of the way into the area...you can’t see the end...

I have very mixed feelings about this place. I am grateful that I was able to experience it. Would I come again? Probably not. If I were a seamstress and sewed apparel this would definitely be worth it but as a quilter there were only a few stores that handled quilting cottons. Having said that if I were a fiber artist there are definitely some treasures to find too. There were stores that just sold buttons...trims...yikes! I was very good and only looked for things that were made in Japan or I can’t find at home or was less than $10/mtre. If I do come again I would only come to Tomato's. There are five floors ...first floor is the bargain floor and the fifth floor has the quilting cottons. Will definitely keep my eyes open for this store in my travels. 

....meanwhile back in our hotel room...

...perfect way to end the day...appys and beer ...

Octopus