Our last day in Tokyo was also the first full day of our Oxalis Adventures tour. We started out the day with breakfast at the hotel since they had a nice western style buffet. We could have had a Japanese style breakfast, but figured we would be having lots of those in the upcoming days. We then met up with our group to head out for the day.

One of our first stops of the day was the Mitsukoshi department store, which is a very traditional, high-end Japanese store. We got there just before opening and got to witness the entire store opening ritual. It starts with a pair of ladies coming out of the doors to announce that the store is opening soon and to give some details on any special events happening at the store that day. Once the store actually opened, all of the staff spend the first five minutes bowing to any customers who passed by them (which included our tour group!). The amazing thing was that without any sign that we could detect, they all stopped the bowing at exactly the same time and went back to their regular jobs. The store had a very large food area downstairs, with ready-made food, as well as a big grocery store type area, but the items here were also quite high end and expensive.

After the poshness of the department store, our next stop was Tokyo's "Electric City", Akihabara. This area is filled with large and small electronics stores, selling everything from laptops and Ipods to the tiniest electrical component. Our tour guide took us into the biggest electronics store we had ever been in, with 7 floors full of electronics and other miscellaneous items and told us that we had 2 hours to explore the store and to have lunch. We decided to have lunch first and ended up a sushi restaurant where the food goes around on a conveyor belt and you select what you want to eat off the belt. The different types of sushi are on different coloured plates, with each plate being at a price level. Once you are done they total up the plates that you have in front of you, and give you your bill. It was a fun way to select what you wanted to eat and the sushi was excellent.

Once lunch was over, we decided to start at the top floor and work our way down through all the different sections of the store. There was just about every item you could possibly want, both electronic and not. Christine found the large jigsaw puzzle section of the 6th floor and bought a very nice puzzle. We also picked out a very nice pair of chopsticks on our way out. We met back up with the group at 1:45 pm to continue the tour.

Our next stop was the posh Ginza district, which the tour guide compared to New York's 5th Avenue. It was filled with high-end shops like Gucci, Coach, and DeBeers (which had the most amazing building). After doing a loop through the area, it was time to move on to the Imperial Palace.

Our visit to the outskirts of the Imperial Palace only showed us a small fraction of the palace grounds. Large areas of the Palace are off-limits to the public, except for 2 days a year (Dec 23 and Jan 2), and the area that the guide wanted to take us was closed today, which was unfortunate. The parts that we did see gave us a small taste of what the palace must have been like when it was the largest castle in the world. The walls and the moat that is still there today are massive. Since the palace area was closed, our guide asked us if we would like to go and see the Meiji Shrine. The entire group was game, even though we were all getting tired from a long day of walking.

It was a 20-minute train ride on the JR line to get to the Shrine entrance, which was a very large and beautiful Torii gate. We passed under 3 of these gates before we got to the shrine, where we did a Shinto cleansing ritual prior to entering. Our guide showed us how to pray at the shrine, and both of us did so. After leaving the shrine, we notice a large tree surrounded by boards with hooks on them. The hooks were overflowing with small wooden plaques that our guide explained to us were wishes that people had left for the Shinto gods. Christine purchased a plaque to add to the wishing wall, as well as a few other small good health charms. We left the shrine area and made our way back to the train to take us back to the hotel.

We decided to venture back out and try and find somewhere to eat on our own. After scouting out a few places, but not seeing anything very exciting, Kent suggested that we walk down a side street that seemed to have a few restaurants on it. We walked past an open front of a restaurant and it had a wonderful wood burning smell coming out of it. We wandered past it, but not finding anything else, we were drawn back towards it and decided to take a chance and head in. They didn't have an English menu, nor did the menu have any pictures we could point to, but as luck would have it, they sat us next to a guy who was from California originally! He was more than happy to help us order, so that made things much easier. We had some wonderful beef, fish (bonito), and scallops, all cooked lightly over a fire that was burning some sort of dried reeds. The smell of the smoke was wonderful, and the food was amazing.

We are leaving the city tomorrow and heading up into the mountains of the Nagano area (Obuse specifically). Not sure when we will have internet again, so we will update this blog as internet access permits!