Japan Day 2

travel date: 1/27/2011
resuming my japan trip post……heavy pic

woke up early - jet lagged!! not all bad since our 1st stop is tsukiji market. we wondered around the dry and wet market for a long time before we found our main destination....sushi dai. after several "sushi dai ni wa doko desuka" and some tamago we finally saw a bunch of people queuing outside sushi dai. after 2 hrs, several photos and some snacks it was finally our turn to enter the famous sushi dai which sits only 13 patrons. we ordered one special set and one normal set.

after a heavy brunch (should have order 1 set), we made our way to sensoji temple. the friendly sushi master. he knows a bunch of languages.

tokyo is very very safe. kids go to school by themselves. no kidnappers in tokyo?

kaminarimon (thunder gate)

nakamise shopping arcade leading towards sensoji. i had so much fun exploring this street. lots of snacks and souvenirs (my kinda thing).

skewered kibi-balls covered with soybean powder

ningyoyaki - small cake with red bean paste filling

the 2nd gate, hozomon

got a bad fortune mikuji :( tied a knot on the metal wires hoping the bad fortune will not attach to me.

fanned the smoke from the burning incense for purification and luck.

threw a coin for offerings and made a prayer.

after all the religious and cultural activites, it was time for foood. we went to daikokuya for their famous tendon. it's on one of the streets by nakamise-dori. pretty easy to find. there were a lot of people and we had to wait for 30 mins to be seated. the tendon is darker and the batter they used is different from what i usually have. definitely something different to try.

after lunch, we made our back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and head to shinjuku-odakyu train station to catch our train to hakone. we bought the hakone free pass(5000 yen) and got upgraded to the romance car(870 yen) since we want to get to our ryokan in time for dinner. warning!! there are no luggage space in the romance car. we got to stuff our luggage in our legroom area and put our legs on top of the luggage. it was an uncomfortable ride.

we missed the bus to our ryokan by seconds and decided to take the cab instead. cabs are expensive. they charge you 710 yen once you get in. fortunately, the ryokan is nearby and the meter didn't tick at all. hooray!!

funny story. we didn't want to wear our yukata to dinner since we weren't sure how to put it on. thinking we should observe how people wear them first. then we walked out the room with slippers provided. on the way to the dining hall, we realized that we didn't know about the slippers either. were they meant to be worn in the room or outside?? we quickly looked at people's feet to check. yup, they were meant to be worn outside the room. phew~~~

our kaiseki dinner. very ornate and incredibly delicious.

after dinner, we rest a bit and wore our yukata ready to try out the onsen. i was a little wary being naked in front of strangers for the first 5 mins.but, i totally enjoyed the experience. it was so tranquil dipping in the outdoor onsen with bamboos and trees everywhere. it felt therapeutic, but that might be my brain acting up.

thoughts: japanese are very polite. a lady tried to open the door to my washroom cubicle. when i got out, she was very apologetic (all i could made out was "sumimasen") and all i could say was daijyobu ^_^