Day 11 is our transit day between Nagoya and Tokyo. We start our day going to Nagoya station and boarding the Shinkansen bullet train all the way to Tokyo. It was a very fast travel to Tokyo and it took less than 2 hours to get to Tokyo Station. My family even got a glimpse of Mount Fuji but I didn’t because I was asleep. When we got there it was raining heavily so we couldn’t walk around the station and we also got there so early that we couldn’t even check into our apartment yet. Dad and Carter sat down in a corner of a mall and me and mom went to explore Tokyo Station! We walked around the malls and stumbled across a former bib gourmand restaurant that served Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. We decided to try 1 for ourselves and it was okay. We felt like it wasn’t bib gourmand level because there was too much plain noodles and not enough sauce or protein. Then we walked the Tokyo character street that had stores of all of Japan’s adored characters. It was fascinating seeing all of the specialized stores. I ended up buying some more packs of Pokémon cards at the Tokyo Station Pokémon centre there. After when the rain cleared up we headed to the other Pokémon centre in the area, Pokemon Center Tokyo DX. We ended up not buying anything there because things were sold out but it was stuff fun to see all the statues of Pokémon again! Then, we headed to check in to our apartment out close to Skytree to we took the subway to the Oshiage (Skytree) subway stop. The apartment was very PINK. Like very very pink. Everything was pink… Anyways, after that we went closer to the Skytree to get something to eat and ended up going to Kura Merry-Go-Round Sushi. It was a little pricey but very yummy because we got to try lots of fresh and freshly grilled sushi pieces! It was a pleasant experience with a nice surprise at the end. We found out that every 5 plates you get a raffle to play some gachapon. We ended up winning a chance to get gachapon by shorting fish and Carter got the “gold” tier for points and ended up getting 3 balls of gachapon. We got little cute charms of sushi and their mascots. Then went to the Skytree mall to cross off our third and final Pokémon center for the day. This was the Pokémon Center Skytree location with Rayquaza as its mascot. It was nice seeing the statues but the Pokémon cards were all sold out! Right outside of Skytree there was a cool performance we saw people performing. It was like a traditional Japanese dance that all of the older people knew. It was called the Bon Odori dance festival. There was an elevated stand in the middle where people were drumming and playing instruments and people surrounding it dancing in a circle. It was a really fun and exciting first day in Tokyo!
-Andercar








