So this was my first full weekend in Tokyo. What was I going to do? Tokyo is such a large city! Well, the weekend began Friday night when Mike (one of the other engineers that is here) and I went to Roppongi to get some dinner and drinks. We needed it after the week we had! This was also Mike’s last night in Tokyo and he wanted to see the area since we had been in Shinjuku the night before. We enjoyed the area, even with all of the Rasta guys that were trying to get us to visit their strip club.
Saturday I was going to meet up with some of the guys that I had been working with all week in the afternoon, but decided before meeting up with them that I would head out and explore some areas on my own. I first headed to the Tokyo Fish Market, Tsukiji. Pike Place in Seattle has nothing on this place! There was stall after stall of people selling fresh seafood. Unfortunately I didn’t get there early enough and they were already starting to clean up. I did get a decent idea of how the place operates and would like to make it back there one morning when it’s really in swing around 5:30am. I was reminded of the steel fabrication shops that my Dad has taken me too, because this was basically one enormous warehouse. Other than that there was no resemblance because this obviously had fish instead of steel. From here I walked around Ginza and grabbed some sushi for lunch. I did end up eating some types of sushi that I normally wouldn’t eat, but was glad that I tried it (thanks Mom and Dad for making me try different things growing up!). From here it was off to the Sony Showroom. Basically this is just a way for Sony to advertise their products, but it’s awesome to see some of the things that they have out there! I’m really needing and HD TV now! 🙂 I then headed back to the hotel to meet up with the guys from work. We started off the afternoon by heading to Akihabara which is the electronics district of Tokyo. This is store after store of nothing but electronics. Everything from components to computers to video games to DVDs, if it’s electric, you’ll find it here. This is every nerd’s dream location! After spending a couple hours walking around, we headed to Asakusa to check out the temple. There were a ton of little booths here selling all kinds of products which would make great gifts. We had a number of interesting items to eat around the area as well, such as cooked rice balls and octopus. We then decided to grab dinner at this place where you cook on your table. This is very similar to many of the Japanese restaurants in the US, except that you’re the one cooking on your table instead of someone else. Once we finished dinner, we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel to drop me off.
After a busy day on Saturday, I decided to take my time getting out and about on Sunday. After being at the Sony Showroom the day before, I decided to head to the Apple Showroom. This wasn’t as impressive as the one at Sony though. From here I headed to Kokyo to check out the gardens of the Imperial Palace. I spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens taking a number of pictures. I decided that I didn’t want to spend the entire day there and wanted to check out Shibuya. Here I walked around for awhile after checking out one of the world’s busiest pedestrian intersections. I headed to Yoyogi Park, which ended up being quite a great experience. The park was full of all kinds of artists performing. I heard a number of different bands playing that I enjoyed quite a bit. There was also a group of drummers that were hanging out having a good time. Since it is coming to the end of the cherry blossoms, there was also a number of people hanging out underneath the trees drinking. It ended up being a weekend full of walking and exploring some awesome areas of the city. It amazes me how different each of the areas are from each other, while still being similar in ways as well.