April 29, 2008 - Around The World, Day 4 - Tokyo

Heading out of Sensoji, we go through a small carnival of short people. Seriously, I am not on stilts or steps or anything. I can't even imagine Tad (my 6'7" cousin) here.

Raw squid on a stick, anyone?
They grill it for you to order, Mongolian-style.

We run from Sensoji to a wharf to catch a ferry.

You get cool views of the city from the ferry.

This is Tokyo Tower. You can hardly see where Godzilla hit it!

This is our ferry, heading out of the river-gates after dropping us off.

The landing site at Hamarikyu Gardens.

The gardens are awesome. So many sakura (cherries)!
We're still so glad to see them in bloom.

The lake in the middle of the gardens is very picturesque.

There are a series of walkways across the lake.
Massive wisteria vines cover the overhead lattice-work.

In the middle of the lake is a tea house.

You can sit in the tea house, have some green tea and a 'cake' (that more closely resembles a sweet version of the glue you make as a kid with flour and water) - so we did.

Several huge peonies bloom in their own section of Hamarikyu Gardens.

They're so big, you really need a reference object.

Jill will do nicely.

It is easy to forget this huge garden is in the middle of one of the largest cities on earth...

The old shrine in the garden.

Check out the pruning of the pine tree. The back/top is wild and just the front part is pruned. Cool.

The 300 year old [pine] tree.

Read about it yourself...
(Well, it is 299 years old...)

Back to the hotel to clean up before dinner...

To make good use of space, they have a lazy suzan for parking decks.
This looks wide, but there really isn't enough room to turn cars around before they go on their elevator ride to the upper floors.
Omitting ramps saves lots of space...

A subway ride and a long walk put us at Gonpachi.
From the outside, the restaurant looks just like a recently-renovated house.

...but it's a cool restaurant inside!

The cooks at Gonpachi.