April 2010 Japan Trip - Day 2

When we woke up the next morning, it was like 10am! Been a hectic few weeks and I guess being away from the kids allowed us to sleep undisturbed. The temperature was cold, 6 degrees Centigrade I think. We stayed at the Courtyard in Ginza, the same hotel we stayed at 3 years ago, when it was still named Ginza Tobu Hotel. The good thing about going back to the same hotel is that it allows you to find your bearings quickly in a foreign city.

We head off to Tully's Coffee for breakfast. Tully's is one of the most popular foreign coffee chains in Japan. We do this everyday, and is the only non-Japanese food we eat.

After breakfast, we took the Tokyo Metro and headed to Omotesando, Japan's version of Paris' Champs Elysees.

It was a tree-lined avenue with name brand shops and outdoor cafes. the weather was hardly above 5 degrees C, which explains why the al fresco tables were generally empty.

If you've never tried Omotesando, you should make this a stop on your next trip to Tokyo. It is a very nice and cozy avenue, especially during spring time.



We then headed to Omotesando Hills, a rather new shopping mall in the area. It is a very interesting mall where the walkway around the mall is inclined, so if you follow the walkway, you could literally use it to walk through the entire mall without having to take the escalators or the elevators.

After walking a bit, we got hungry and there were quite a few interesting restaurants around...

We eventually settled on a ramen restaurant and it turned out to be quite tasty (albeit a bit expensive). It came out to about 800 pesos for a bowl of ramen, but hey, this is japan, and we were in a glitzy area, so I guess we should have expected it.

By the way, if you think fast food is out of favor in Japan, check out this line outside a Shakey's outlet! I have to tell you that this scene repeated itself in every Shakey's outlet we saw over the next few days.

Nightime found us back in Ginza, Tokyo's version of New York's Times Square. The weather was very cool and the whole strip was lighted up.

We walked around Ginza and felt hungry after 90 minutes, so we started looking for a sushi place for dinner. We remembered our last trip 3 years ago, and the sushi places were fun (although they all allow smoking) and the atmosphere was very friendly. We found one on Ginza, and I got to have my favorite beer again, Asahi Super Dry. Dinner was a dream, and we walked back to the hotel in the cool weather to end the day.