Deb's Blog

This was the last day of our 21-day trip to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Unfortunately, it was the only rainy day of the whole trip, and the only full day we had on our own to see as much as possible. So instead of taking the subway—which was one of the things we had on our must-do list—we took Ubers and taxis. The city probably felt much bigger than it is because of the zigzag maze of streets and freeways. And it seemed like we traveled from one end to the other multiple times.

Started the day with a traditional Japanese meal of buckwheat ramen, dim-sum, and cured salmon. I ate the ramen with chopsticks, ignoring the looks of other guests while I pulled and slurped the noodles into my mouth. I didn’t care how it looked because it was delicious and I was having too much fun.

Our first destination was the TOKYO NATIONAL MUSEUM. We knew we didn’t have time to see the whole museum, so we chose the two most important areas, the Japanese Gallery and…..the Museum Shop!

In the Japanese Gallery, I was particularly interested in the paintings. But, while hunting for them, we came across a fascinating exhibit of samurai armor. Can you just imagine how intimidated you’d feel upon seeing a fully armored samurai warrior headed your way. Yikes!

The paintings consisted of folding screens, scrolls and woodblock prints.

The most famous and my favorite Japanese woodblock print artist was Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). Monet, Manet, and especially Van Gogh were influenced by Hiroshige’s work.

I especially enjoyed the kimonos exhibit, having had the experience of being dressed in a formal silk kimono the day before. Exquisite!

I stopped to watch a video of Kabuki performances:

Our next destination was the Shibuya district, said to be the “epicenter of modern Japanese culture,” popular with young people, filled with shopping complexes, bars, art and music. In the center of the area is the Shibuya Scramble Crossing, an intersection where vehicles stop in all directions to allow pedestrians to cross. It’s said to be the world’s busiest crossing with as many as 3,000 people crossing at a time!

It was past lunchtime, and we were starving. Eating at a ramen restaurant was on the must-do list that my youngest nephew, Morgan, gave me. He had lived in Tokyo for over a year. There were too many ramen places, so we just randomly picked one. Turned out to be one of the best Japanese meals we had on the whole trip. We ordered from a machine, and seated ourselves at the bar. We devoured BIG bowls of SPICY HOT!! ramen floating in chili oil. Divine!

Our last stop on the way to our hotel was the TOKYO TOWER (819 ft) (1958), used for radio and television broadcasting for Fuji Television, among others. It was the tallest tower in Japan until the construction of Tokyo Skytree (1,480 ft) in 2012. The designer, Tachu Naito, based his design on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The views give you a sense of how densely populated Tokyo is. Tokyo, which is the size of Los Angeles County, has a population of 37.4 million! It’s the most populous metropolitan area in the world.

Wish we’d had more time to explore Tokyo. So much to see! But we covered a lot of territory in one day, and had a great time.