Life is an Adventure: Last Day in Tokyo

We got up a little after 5 am this morning to go to the famous Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. Luckily it was a short ride on the metro from our hotel to the market. This was the place that we saw a ton of foreigners. I think every guide book says to go to this fish market. We caught the tail end of the tuna auction. The auctioneer was entertaining

and the tuna were huge and frozen.

After we spent a few minutes there we walked around and looked at all of the stuff for sale.

Once we looked around just a small part of the huge market we stopped at a small (and I mean small) and narrow sushi place to get some fresh sushi.

After last night, I was a little hesitant about more raw fish, but I did my best. Ben and I shared a set of sushi and I really only ate the rolls with tuna and fish eggs (though I had a hard time swallowing the fish egg rolls). Ben was the more adventurous and fish loving one so he had the real sushi. Oh, and I ate a cooked shrimp head, which actually wasn't too bad. I can't think too much about it though. When we got back to the hotel we changed and went for a little run, showered, checked out and went to the Imperial Palace. The tour is free, but is only on Tuesdays and Fridays and you have to make a reservation.

Honestly, I was not impressed by the actual palace itself (at least the outside which was the only part I could see),

but the grounds were amazing and the older buildings were pretty cool. Here we are in front of the most beautiful building on the grounds so we were told.

I had wanted to see the east gardens, but we didn't have time because the tour went longer than I had expected and I had made a tea ceremony reservation at a hotel I thought was near but ended up being a mile away. I kind of felt like we were on the amazing race as we ran from the palace grounds to the hotel where the tea ceremony was. We were late, but they still let us do the ceremony. It was really neat.

We were in our own room and were served traditional green tea. It was a powder put into hot water and we were told that only on special occasions do the Japanese have this kind of green tea. Usually they drink the leaf tea. Before we had the tea we were given a sweet which had red beans in the middle. I don't know why, but it seems like the Koreans and Japanese like to put beans in their deserts. It was ok. It was neat watching the ceremony and I'm glad we got to participate and observe one. We got our picture taken, but it is a little blurry.

We then went to the Senso-Ji shrine. It was very touristy, but cool at the same time.

Our last stop for the day before going to the airport was the Edo-Tokyo Museum. We didn't have as much time as I wanted (I think we were rushed to only 30 minutes once we got there), but it was a pretty awesome museum. I'm sad we didn't get to spend more time there. I really liked it.