After spending the better part of the morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market, we headed to the Tokyo Tower, one of the city's most iconic landmarks. On the walk there, we passed this alley that reminded me a bit of the laneways in Melbourne, although I couldn't tell if the shops down this road were restaurants and boutiques or something else entirely. In hindsight, we should have wandered down that way to check it out, but we were on a mission! I was hoping Google Translate could help me retroactively identify this alley, but all I got was the address and the word 'mall'. BTW, if you are ever traveling, especially to a country that uses a different alphabet, the Google Translate app is an absolute must. Its most useful feature on this trip was the photo translation tool. We could take a picture of a menu at a restaurant, highlight the characters we wanted translated, and see the English equivalent. It wasn't perfect, but helped us identify key words and we felt confident we knew what we were eating...at least most of the time.

Zojoji Temple

Just in front of the Tokyo Tower sits Zojoji Temple, which is the main temple of the Jodo-Buddhist sect. According to the sign (which we photographed for future reference- brilliant idea by Peter) the temple was built in 1393 and relocated to the current site in 1598. Most of the present-day buildings were rebuilt in the 1970s, so this temple was relatively new construction compared to most of what we saw in Japan!

Tokyo Tower

After visiting the temple, we walked over to the base of the Tokyo Tower, which you might recognize as modeled after the Eiffel Tower. We considered buying admission up to one of the two observation points, but held off in favor of the newer and taller Tokyo Skytree, which we planned to visit later in our trip. In hindsight, we should have just taken advantage of the clear skies while we were at the Tokyo Tower because it was too overcast the rest of the trip to go up the Skytree.

Imperial Palace

I finally took a turn with the camera!
Intense gate protected by an equally intense guard.
After viewing the palace, we walked to the edge of the park, where we took a quick look at this statue of Kusunoki Masashige, a 14th-century samurai who is remembered as a symbol of samurai loyalty. Honestly, there were about 500 adorably fashionable babies in this park so I was a bit more focused on them than the statue. I swear 100% of the children in Japan were more fashionable than I am, which is faint praise, but you get the point.

Check out previous posts from our trip to Japan below!

Arriving in Tokyo/First Impressions 

Exploring Central Tokyo:

I'm taking a quick break from recapping our Japan vacation to share a few pictures from my recent trip home. I hadn't been back to Minnesota in exactly a year, and have since decided that was far too long between visits. Hopefully that'll be the longest I'm ever away! Unfortunately, Peter wasn't able to join me due to work commitments, so I was somewhat dreading the actual travel portion of this trip. Thankfully, the flights were relatively painless, especially when I realized I was eligible for an upgrade to United's Economy Plus seating on the way back to Melbourne. I was actually a bit bummed because it looked like I was going to have an entire row to myself until about five minutes before we took off, when a couple of standby passengers rushed on and claimed the seats next to me. Of course they did. I felt like I couldn't complain too much, though, because I was still in an upgraded seat, until about two hours into the 15 hour flight when someone in a row behind me vomited on the floor. So that was terrible.

Anyway, this was a really fun and exciting visit home because 1) I got to meet my newborn niece and 2) one of my best friends got married and I got to be in the wedding! Last year, I was only home for about six days, which was an absolutely crazy thing to do, so this time I made sure my trip was a good two and a half weeks, which allowed for lots of time with family and friends.