Japan Take Two: Last Days in Tokyo

by - Thursday, April 05, 2018

We wrapped up our trip in Japan by spending our last day and a half wandering around some neighborhoods in Tokyo.

We started Tuesday morning at the Tsujiki Fish Market -- it was the last major thing we wanted to check off our Japan to-see list.

Giant tuna heads at the fish market

We meandered through the stalls and made a breakfast out of super fresh fish and other street food from the various vendors.

My stomach can't really handle sushi first thing in the morning so I stuck more with some of the grilled options. We stopped at my favorite stand from last time and got those delicious barbecued scallops again.

Street food at the market

We finished our stroll through the outer market just in time for the inner market to open to tourists. The inner market is where the fish are taken and then cleaned, chopped up and sold to the highest bidder. By the time it's open to the public, most of the work is done and the fish guts have largely been washed off the floors.

You're not supposed to take pictures inside, so just picture lots of really small walkways lined with vendors and giant ice chests to hold all the fish for transport.

Seeing the inner market was definitely way more fascinating than the outer market, so if you go to Tokyo before the market moves, I highly recommend making sure you walk through the inner market.

After our morning at the fish market we headed across town to meet Scott for lunch. He took us to this tiny little place that served the most excellent set lunches.

I only mention this because if you look closely at the picture of my lunch, you'll notice I was given a pair of scissors to cut the meat because they don't uses knives and forks in Japan.

In Japan you cut meat with scissors

Also this lunch ranks up there as one of the best meals we ate while we were there.

We spent the afternoon walking around the Akihabara neighborhood, which is famous for all of it's insanely large electronics and anime shops.

Akihabara -- Electric Town

We walked in one store that was seven floors of the most cutting-edge electronics, but also featured a full wine, beer and liquor section on the first level. It was the strangest combination of things in one store ever.

This was a fun neighborhood to explore without any sort of agenda in mind. We also stopped at one shop where two kids were playing old school Super Nintendo games on the sidewalk and watched for a while.

Because our flight back to the U.S. wasn't until the evening the next day, we had a little bit of time in the morning and afternoon to see any last minute things.

We grabbed breakfast at this big American-style dinner with Christine and then went to visit the temple dedicated to the 47 ronin, which I will admit I only knew about because of that movie from a bunch of years ago.

Statue of a monk at Sengakuji Temple

This temple was much smaller and way less crowded than any of the other super touristy temples we went to.

47 ronin graves

47 ronin graves

We took our time walking back from this temple, soaking in our last couple of hours in Japan.

On our walk back, we stumbled upon the Snoopy Museum. I'm not sure what the deal is with Snoopy in Japan, but people seem to like him a lot. We didn't go in the museum, but we had fun with the character cut-outs outside.

Snoopy Museum Tokyo

Snoopy zzz

Snoopy kisses

After that, it was time to head back to Scott's apartment, grab our bags and make our way to the airport.

This trip was great. We had such a wonderful time and are very grateful to Scott and Christine for letting us stay with them.

Fitbit stats Tuesday:
24,860 steps
10.52 m iles

Fitbit stats Wednesday
18328 steps
7.77 miles

You May Also Like

1 comments

  1. Glad you guys enjoyed “Japan Take Two”! We are looking forward to catching up! 😊

    ReplyDelete