Tokyo Valentine's: Part 1

This weekend, we had the chance to spend some time wandering the streets of Tokyo.  In particular, we visited the Ginza district, Akihabara, and the Tokyo Tower.  

On friday we left bright and early and headed to the train station.  We managed to make it to Tokyo in about an hour...amazing!  We figured the easiest way to get to our hotel would mean getting off at the main Tokyo station and walking to Ginza and our hotel.  Well, we made it to Ginza, but it took us a good 30 minutes and finally asking directions to get to our hotel.  We stayed at the Hotel Monterey La Soeur.  

The rooms were teeny tiny, but super cute!  It had all of the essentials, plus pajamas and a Japanese newspaper (in English) delivered in the morning.  

The bed took up the entire room.  It was quite cozy!  :-)

After we checked in (they let us in early!) we headed towards the main street of Ginza.  This is known as the "5th Avenue" of Tokyo and I can definitely see the comparison!

There were stores from every major designer in the world, plus some amazing company stores.  This apple building was 4 floors of apple goodness.  Unfortunately, they didn't have the iPad...we looked.  We ended up in the food hall of one of the huge department stores for some food.  They didn't have any place to sit, so we headed across the street to a Starbucks, got some drinks and ate there.  I'm not sure if that's totally kosher, but it worked for us!  As we were leaving, we noticed this on the wall...

  

We ate/drank at the FIRST Starbucks in Japan!  We thought that was kind of cool, seeing as we're from Seattle and all.  :-)

Tim wasn't feeling very good, so we headed back to the hotel from a nap before our evening adventure to Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo Tower was a must-see for us on this trip and we thought we were close enough to stroll over there from our hotel.  Ha!  We thought WRONG!  You would think that it would be a pretty obvious landmark to walk towards, but we failed to take into account the number of skyscrapers that made finding the Tower so difficult.  It was a long and cold journey to the tower that evening...

The elusive Tokyo Tower...will we EVER make it?!

Finally, after going the "scenic route" to the Tower, we made it!  I was shocked to find a mall sitting under the tower and absolutely no line to get to the observation deck.  

Unlike the Eiffel Tower, the elevator is in the center of the Tower and the main observation deck is about half-way up.  At night, they open up the top observation deck for an extra fee, we choose to partake in that.  

Here is one of many photos we took of the city:

Unfortunately our camera doesn't do "night" very well, so the pictures are kind of blurry.  I think it makes this one a bit more artistic...do you see the starfish?

After we had gotten our fill of the view, we headed down into the mall.  We hadn't eaten in a while and decided to just do dinner in their little food court.  As we were leaving, Tim had to take some glamour shots of the Tower.  

I made him pose when the Tower changed colors...

Tim still wasn't feeling very well, so tried to find a convenience store to buy some medication, but no one had anything.  By the time we figured out that we needed to go to a pharmacy, they were all closed. Then we started to notice how everything was shut down for the evening.  I asked Tim what time it was and, amazingly, it was only 8:30.  Evidently Tokyo is more an "early to bed" city.