Tokyo Trip, Day 3

On our third and final day together in Tokyo, Japan, my sister (B), her husband (G), and I had to be out of our hostel by 11 in the morning so we woke up early, Skyped home to our parents, our oldest brother, and his wife before packing our stuff and checking out. Used to travelers, the hostel had a place we could store our bags during the day as long as we got them that night. We did that and head out to Shinjuku Station to look for a bookstore, grabbing breakfast on the way. B wanted to find a copy of the travel guide we had borrowed from the hostel all weekend and had been told about a huge bookstore near Shinjuku Station. Unfortunately we can’t read Japanese and wound up getting lost until we asked a few people for directions and found the store whose fourth floor had English books, including travel guides to Japan. They decided to buy another travel guide than what we had been using and we walked on, and on, and on,… After a few hours and when our feet were starting to complain my sister’s map finally said we were nearly to the shrine she had set for the day’s expedition. G and I decided it was lunchtime (beyond that really since it was early afternoon by then but we finally saw restaurants after about two hours of walking residential streets). We compromised by getting fast food so we’d have more time to explore her shrine. We wound up trying Freshness Burger, which being Japanese meant it had really small portions, and the burgers were great. Finally refreshed from a half hour of sitting and full stomachs, the three of us set out to explore Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated to an emperor and his wife who helped bring the western ideas of the late 1800s into Japan when it needed a quick modernization. We didn’t realize we went to the shrine on the weekend of the Shichi-Go-San Festival, or the 7-5-3 Festival, where girls aged three and seven as well as boys aged five are dressed up in traditional outfits and taken to shrines or temples to pray for good luck on the children. It was fascinating seeing all the traditional outfits (the parents are often in traditional dress as well or just suits and semiformal dresses) as well as the shrine itself.
After we left the shrine, we walked a down the street (I believe it was Harajuku street but am not sure as I didn’t write the name down in my notes) that was full of brand name western stores like American Eagle, just to say we’d gone down a famous street. That done we headed back to our hostel to pick up our backpacks and go our separate ways again. First we decided to get supper and chose a pizza place. Unfortunately it didn’t have an English menu so we had fun pointing at Japanese kanji and hoping we got something good. It worked out and we each managed to get good pizza, even if the pizzas were small, and we had a fun hour before separating at the train station, me on my way back to work and them off to a few days in Kyoto, Japan before heading home.