Tuesday, September 29, 2009

'Ritaville International - Day 1 (I think)

Wow, what an awesome 10 days! We did SO MUCH in such a short time. My memory's a little foggy on sthe pecifics, but I've got the major details.

Robin arrived Thursday afternoon, I drove to Narita to pick her up. We got stuck in a bit of traffic and got back to my house in the early evening. We were planning to head out for din-din, but since we were leaving bright and early Friday morning, decided to just relax at my place instead.

Headed for T-town as soon as we put E on the bus. We stayed at the Tokyo Prince hotel, right at the base of Tokyo Tower. The Prince Tokyo's shtick is that they haven't changed the hotel since the early 70's. I was worried that meant we'd be staying in an run-down, 30 year old pile of crap, but it was really nice. It's been very well maintained and everything looked great. They even still have actual keys for the doors! And a huge, FREE parking lot, which is pretty amazing in downtown Tokyo!


We parked the car and struck off for Tokyo Tower, literally a 10 minute walk.

This was a pretty, little park just behind/below the T-Tower. Hard to believe we were smack-dab in the middle of the biggest city in the world!


Looking down on the Prince from T-tower

My foot in Tokyo Tower

In the elevator heading back down


Next we headed for Shibuya to meet the famous Hachiko and take a walk through the busiest intersection in the world. For those of you who don't know, Richard Gere (hubba hubba) has a new movie coming out called "Hachi" based on the story of Hachiko, so I thought it'd be cool for Rob to go there.



We ducked into a Tenkaippin for R's first real Japanese meal, she had a massive bowl of ramen and an order of gyozas (okay, so they're actually Chinese, but they're still very Japanese), she loved them both so much we had the same thing for lunch the next day!


Night view of Tokyo Tower FROM OUR ROOM!!!! How awesome is that?


Our poor, exhausted dogs on our hotel "balcony" .









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4 comments:

shinshu life said...

That park is amazing. Looks more like my backyard than my image of Tokyo!!

And I *love* the view from your room. I watched a Japanese drama all about Tokyo Tower one time and have a bit of a thing for it.

Can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip!

Alisa said...

Oh WOW!, i am so happy for you. I wish my BFF coudl come and we could do things like that!!! :(
It looks like ur trip was amazing!

Oh and ... How did u make reservations @ the prince hotel?
We always see it, when we visit Tokyo Tower. I would love to know the details of that. :):)

And, i want your room, for that amazing view, WOW!!!!!!

Robin Vistnes said...

It totally rocked- I can't believe it was only 3 weeks ago. We did so much in so little time!!

Gina said...

It sounds like a really fun time you both had. And that really was an awesome view from your hotel room!