We got up and had another nice breakfast downstairs. This time we had the whole place to ourselves.

We decided to start the day back at Asakusa Shrine and Senso-ji Temple since when we went the other night it was to late to get goshuins We were able to get one at each spot and I even bought a beautiful band closure for my goshuincho. As we were walking around we saw a wedding couple, and what I’m assuming were their parents, arrive in rickshaws. They pulled up in front of Asakusa Shrine. A photographer was with them taking photos. I don’t know if this was just for photos or if there was a religious purpose.

We decided to walk from there to Tokyo Skytree after snacking on a chocolate banana. We got stopped in the street by a little old lady who asked if we had a few minutes to come in and see her temple We were following her upstairs when Ryan jokingly said, “Is this the part where we get murdered?” haha! The women were all really sweet, they taught us how to chant and how to hold the prayer beads. They explained to us how their sect of Buddhism worked and offered for us to participate in a special ceremony that would allow us to visit their main temple at Mt. Fuji. We declined and they chanted with us one more time before we left.

We kept going to Tokyo Skytree and saw the same wedding couple on their way to another shrine. The poor photographer was running ahead of them with all of her gear and then spinning around to get shots and then running ahead again. I did not envy her in that moment! It turns out the Skytree was way more expensive than we anticipated but Ryan really wanted to go so we got the tickets to access floor 350 and 450. It was pretty cool to look out and see just how big Tokyo is. We could just barely make out Mt. Fuji in the distance. The elevator to floor 350 was so smooth and quiet and fast – 600 m/minute! The elevator to floor 450 had a glass roof so you could see the tower structure as you ascended. Floor 450 had a cute Barbie Exhibit showing off all the things Barbie has done through the years. We worked our way back down to floor 340 so we could look down on Tokyo through the glass floor. They literally only had about 4 sq. ft for people to stand on so it wasn’t quite as glamorous as we thought it would be.

We had lunch on the 1st floor of the Skytree (yakisoba noodles) then headed over to Akihabara. Ryan was on a gachapon hunt, specifically for the Tokyo manhole covers. We walked through what seemed like 100 Sega arcades and played one game – Pong.

After no luck with the gachapons in Akihabara, Ryan navigated us to Tokyo Gacha Street which ended up being in the underground of Tokyo Station. We walked the whole way there and I saw homeless people for the first time on our trip. There were three of them who had beds under the train tracks. What struck me most is that they still eft their shoes outside their “home.” In Tokyo Station we also checked out the Lego Store and I ordered condensed milk and strawberry ice cream from Momi and Toys.

We still had a little time so we went to Odaiba to see the Gundham statue. They change it out all the time so we happened to catch the Unicorn Gundham. We grabbed McDonald’s for dinner and headed back to the hotel for the night.