Day 14 – Tokyo Skytree, and Headed Home

The next morning, JB and walked to the Tokyo Skytree, which we had been wanting to do for some time (since we kept seeing it from everywhere we went). The Skytree is the tallest broadcast tower in the world, and the second tallest building in the world, and it is pretty impressive to look at. We had seen it from a distance from several of the places we had gone in Japan.

The tower lights up at night in alternating purple and blue, and has a rotating light that goes around it, reminiscent of a Cylon.

We paid to ride up to the observatory and took a bunch of pictures and videos from the top.

The observation deck was at 350 meters, which is about 1,150 ft.

Even on a cloudy day, you could see the whole skyline of the city, with all the major metropolitan areas.

Looking out towards Skinjuku:

And looking every other way:

In one spot, they have glass floors so that you can test your fear of heights:

We rode the fun, super-fast elevator back down again, and took some more pictures from the bottom up.

And here, we also found the Japanese Johnny Depp. JB took a candid photo of him. Ok, maybe not so candid.

Below the Skytree, there is a big mall-type area, with one floor that is just filled with incredible looking food. They were offering samples at some places, but the humbow had caught our eye, so we had to have one of those before we headed back.

We took the Tobu Skytree Line back, which is a kind of monorail. Here is me taking a picture of JB taking a picture of this guy taking a picture of the train coming.

And here is the movie JB shot:

And the picture that I took when the train got closer.

The train took us back to Asakusa station, where we wandered through the shops again, this time in the daytime. It was quite a bit busier with all the shops open! This is the beginning of the row of some of the oldest shops, originating at the gateway of the Sensō-ji temple.

Some great masks at one of the shops:

And this is another shot of the Skytree from back in Asakusa.

We had seen three little conveyor belt sushi places the night before while walking through one of the main shopping streets, so when we started to get hungry we went back to look for these again. The first two were cheaper, but did not accept credit cards, so when we got to the third one, and they did, we were happy to give them our business. That also made some really great sushi. The conveyor belt was almost just for looks at the hour we were there, the chef just made each item we requested to order. We also ordered the seafood miso, which was incredibly yummy. Since we still had some humbow in our bellies, we ran out of room long before we ran out of things we wanted to try.

After that, it was time to head back and gather up Brian for the ride to the airport. We arrived from the Narita airport, but left from the Haneda airport. The last leg of travel to the airport was a crazy, super rocky monorail ride. You could also see all the way down the car, unlike most trains and subways, which made it kind of like a ride.

Last Photo – Goodbye Japan! We had a blast.

Advertisements