As Marjorie mentioned, we just got back from Tokyo, and boy are our feet tired. We thought we walked a lot in Singapore, but we earned our Urban Hiker merit badges this weekend.

It was a very short trip -- a day traveling, two complete days there, and a day traveling back. It was all we could afford to take off at this point. We never realized before, that it's as far from Singapore to Tokyo as it is from Atlanta to Anchorage, Alaska. When I was living in Atlanta it was inconceivable that we would ever bop up to Anchorage for the weekend, but now that we're so far from everything we've developed an amazing tolerance for spending a day in a plane. What's bad is that we seem perfectly willing to bankrupt ourselves in the process of taking these trips; as soon as we get a few hundred saved up, it seems, we wander over to Travelocity.

We had a teaser visit to Tokyo once before -- a one day stopover two years ago. We coulda shoulda woulda stayed for longer but we were chicken. We loved our one day there, and it wasn't that scary, so we decided to go back, for TWO whole days this time.

ANYway. On the bus ride into town, we oriented ourselves by the Tokyo Tower, which we remembered from last time. It's Tokyo's answer to the Eiffel Tower. We lost sight of it eventually, until we got to our room, open the curtains, and it was RIGHT THERE. Across the street. Crazy.

Our first day was spent figuring out the train system, which we handled pretty well during the trip, as long as we had two brains and sets of eyes working together on it. Many of the signs, quite rudely I must say, didn't even have English translations. We rode out to some of the funkier districts and shopped all day, then had a few Bass Ales (which we had been missing) then tried to find the restaurant in Roppongi that we ate at last time. No luck -- they seem to have moved around the streets and buildings or something. So we just picked a different one at random and had another fantastic meal.

Monday we explored more districts, including the one famous for its "love hotels", that have hourly rates posted. We made a late try for the Imperial Palace only to find that it's closed Mondays. So we just wandered some more, cleaned up, then went out to the Ginza district for dinner. Ended up in "Yakatori Alley" which is lined with small sidewalk eateries serving up fried
veggies and meats and other animal parts. The "pig intestine" was bad enough, but then you read down the menu and see "pig intestine END". We found some safer sounding things to order, and it was all delicious. Much to the amusement of some surrounding customers, Marjorie tried to pay for the meal with about $700 worth of yen. We are lucky the lady was honest!

So mostly it was just random exploring and shopping, but Tokyo is one of those cities where just being there is enough. There's always something to look at or smell or taste or listen to. We even had an exploratory conversation about trying to move there, but I think we really can't afford to make the move right now.

There was a special treat on our final day. We awoke right around sunrise to catch our plane, and when we finally opened the windows, we caught a rare glimpse of Mount Fuji, right through the supports of the Tokyo Tower. It's not often that the air there is clear enough to see it.