April Adventures Across Japan; Phase 1 in Tokyo: Fish, Animation and Japanese Pancakes.

Tokyo, Day 4.

Sadly, the day started off pretty rainy and blah... I went out for a walk when I woke up in the hopes that it would clear up... Ah well. While preparing for this trip, I had created a fairly easy going itinerary, mostly to make sure that I had accomodations all figured out (which was good because I almost forgot to book myself a place to stay April 1st haha), and bought some tickets ahead of time for a couple of attractions that we wanted to partake in. The first of such things was the Ghibli museum. However, it being Ashely's first day in Japan and the time difference being so great from Canada, that wasn't until the afternoon. So I started my day with a leisurely breakfast at the hostel and went out to grab a coffee and give Ashley time to wake up and stuff.

We checked out the Ekimise building a little, but figured that a visit to the Sumida Aquarium would be a much better use of our time. It's a relatively small aquarium located in the Tokyo Skytree complexe, so it was really easy to get to from Asakusa station (the Skytree line goes there. Bam. Done) Got some really nice pictures of fishies and saw some crazy cool candy.




Due to the fact that I mis-remembered (and incorrectly noted and didn't bother to actually check the tickets) we got to the Ghibli museum a *little* too early... which was a relief because I thought we had run late due to me losing track of time. Thankfully there's a nice park (it had stopped raining by then and almost looked like it wanted to clear up for us) so we had a wander and got some pictures of pretty flowers...
 

If you're a fan of Hayao Miyazaki, you *must* check this place out. If you love cartoons, you should really check it out as well. They had lots of neat displays up showing different styles of animation (not just cell painted or CGI) and it was a pretty magical place. One word of advice, though, the gift shop is a madhouse and crazy over priced (I wanted to get a patch, but they wanted about $12 for one... so I opted for a $6 pin instead... yeesh). The soup at the cafe was pretty good and hearty, so that tided us over until we had dinner with Megumi, who I met when I went up to Hokkaido.

With the rain done, it turned into a really beautiful evening, so we opted to walk around and take our time getting to our dinner date at Sometaro. I've only had okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes, cooked on a gas grill) once before, with work, and we were all pretty drunk because it was our office Christmas party, so I think I appreciated it a little more this time around. I failed to take many notes about which dishes we ordered, but they were all delicious. I think we may have gone with beef, we had one yakisoba (bbq noodles in sauce) dish and I believe we had the house specialty. We cooked the first okonomiyaki dish ourselves, but then got a show from the staff for the other two. I have got to practice cracking eggs one-handed style... it looks so slick.

Since the weather had cleared up, walking in the evening was quite lovely. We stopped into shops that were still open as we passed, grabbed a couple of tasty beverages to enjoy at the hostel and even some dessert. Asakusa is right near the Sumida River (隅田川) and we have to cross it to get to the hostel. The clear evening lent itself to some nice photo ops. Ashley got to see the Skytree all lit up.