# Day 2 - First full day in Tokyo ## Getting up We woke up at 4:30am today after getting to bed early last night, and watched the sunrise over the city from our hotel window. We also got a beautiful view of Mount Fuji with the full moon visible above it, which is making us feel excited already for our trip to Lake Kawaguchi, where we will see it up close! ![[day 2 - 1.jpg]] Once they opened at 6:30am, we went to get breakfast at one of the 4 breakfast restaurants of the hotel, the Sky View restaurant, where we were treated to another beautiful view over the Akasaka Palace and the surrounding gardens, as well as the city. ![[day 2 - 2.jpg]] ## Finding the right palace Having seen the Akasaka Palace and the gardens from up above we decided to see if we could take a look inside, but we realized that it was not open to visitors at all after walking around the entire complex. We moved on to the Imperial Palace via transit, and explored the gardens there for a few hours and learned about the various types of buildings that are or were there, and what their usage was. ![[day 2 - 3.jpg]] ![[day 2 - 6.jpg]] ![[day 2 - 7.jpg]] ![[day 2 - 8.jpg]] ![[day 2 - 9.jpg]] We also ended up stalking after quite a few birds that were in and around the gardens, even though birding wasn't necessarily a focus of the trip. We still ended up spotting quite a few, and got a hand full of new "lifers" (birds we have never seen before). ![[day 2 - 5.jpg]] ![[day 2 - 4.jpg]] After the palace, we went to Glitch Coffee, which came highly recommended by the internet. Their "minimal" latte art was interesting, and the actual coffee very delicious. ![[day 2 - 13.jpeg]] ![[day 2 - 12.jpeg]] For a midday snack we decided to partake in a big part of Japanes culture - Konbinis, 24 hour convenience stores similar to American Bodegas. Manu got an egg salad / chicken teriyaki sandwich and Sophia got salted potato chips, which in Japan are also flavored with a delicious fermented soy seasoning. Everything they make here has a bit of extra zing! Whereas in the west you would expect "gas station food" to be the lowest of the low in terms of quality, konbinis are known for reliable quality, and our selections were no exception. ## Trainspotting Next stop was train spotting at Ochanomizu / Hijiri bridge, which is known for three train lines converging there along the canal, which was a fun thing to do on the way to Akihabara. ![[day 2 - 10.jpg]] Akihabara, known as "Electric Town", was once the ultimate hub for electronics and all things tech. Nowadays it has become a retro tourist attraction with endless claw machines, gambling parlors, souvenir stores catering especially to anime fans, and seemingly anything else you could want to buy. We saw food stalls, expensive watch and suit stores, stores selling electric cables of various thicknesses (the kind you use to wire your house, not the kind you charge your phone with). It was fun to see, but very touristy and busy. ![[day 2 - 11.jpg]] After that we went back to the hotel to put our feet up for a few hours - according to our phones we had been walking for about 16km/10mi and 20.000 steps each at this point. The hotel provides a yukata, a type of Japanese robe. After coming home from a day of walking and taking public transit you don't necessarily want to shower and change your clothes immediately if you're still planning on going out later, but you also don't want your dirty clothing on the furniture. So you change into the fresh yukata, which looks like a nicer version of a bath robe that you can wear around the house during the daytime. Decent thing to have around! ## Disastrous dinner We ended up being too tired to follow our original plans this evening, so wanted to take it easy and just go to a local restaurant to get dinner, then go back to the hotel and go to bed early once again. We went to a place called Gluten Free T's Kitchen, which sounded good on paper because it had good reviews on Google, and had both vegan and non-vegan options. It started with the waiters seeming to be very disorganized in just getting people on a waiting list. We stayed there for about an hour and a half, and they brought out dishes in no particular order and with large breaks in between. We witnessed similar issues on the tables surrounding us: one waited endlessly for their desert, while a family of four received the parents' dishes half an hour before the childrens'. Eventually people started trying to leave and demanded their partially-fulfilled orders to be cancelled. When Sophia's main dish still hadn't arrived 30min after Manu had already finished eating, we decided to abandon ship as well. Unfortunately, while Manu's main dish did arrive, it was unpalatable. The situation called for another trip to a Konbini, where Sophia tried some unique Japanese snacks that were a total treat. At least we knew we had reservations at two different very highly rated places for the next two days, so we didn't let it ruin our night.