Japan Day 2

The majority of the day was devoted to the Panoramic Tokyo guided tour. It included a bus ride tour with our guide Sato-San that stopped at the Meiji Temple, the front gate of the Imperial Palace, the Sensoji Temple, and the Odaiba waterfront. We also had a stop for lunch at the top of a twelve story hotel and a cruise around Tokyo Bay that lasted about 50 minutes. All in all it was a fun tour. Our guide was funny and we laughed at a lot of his jokes. The tour was conducted in English and we had a club of Japanese people learning English along with us which was fun because they actually wanted to practice their English with us. We particularly got along with Oda Tetsuo who called himself Teddy as an American name. He spoke English very well. He said he had been learning it for five years. He is 64 years old. There was a lot to see on the tour and I ran my memory card out of pictures. I managed to steal Scott’s card to continue for the Odaiba waterfront because his camera battery died.

The anecdote of the day. At the Sensoji temple you can pay 100 yen to buy a fortune. You drop your money in and you pick up a canister of sticks and shake it. Then you turn the canister over and pull out the stick that has a number on it, in Japanese characters of course. You find that number on a collection of drawers and pull out the fortune written on a sheet of paper. They have English translations on them. I managed to pull out, “The Lowest Fortune.” Fortunately you can tie your fortune to a stand in the temple and that allows you to leave your bad fortune behind. Everyone else got good or at least regular fortunes. They’ll be bringing theirs home….

I should point out day 2 falls on my Birthday, October 29. It is ahead of the US as we crossed the international date line to get here so for everyone else my birthday falls on our day 3. We finished off the night with a meal at a place called Kirin City. It is the firt place I forgot to take a picture of the meal before I ate it so all I have is a picture of the empty plate. I promise it was roast lamb and potatoes.