Day 1 - Tokyo

A jetlag sleep-poor night facilitated a pretty early start to the day.  The view from the hotel seemed to sum up Shinjuku: modern, up-market, and built-up.

View from our room at the Tokyo Hilton (Shinjuku)

Cam and I headed off for a run around the park adjacent to the hotel.  Disturbingly, each entry point to the park had a sign stating that Dengue fever infection(s) had been traced back to the park and that long pants and sleeves were recommended.  Apparently we were staying quite close to Ground Zero for the recent outbreak that had occurred in a few parks in Tokyo.  Trusting our speedy running and hairy legs would keep us bite-free we carried on with the run.  The park was a simple two block urban greenspace with some statues and an open concrete amphitheatre.  As we were running through a group of roughly a hundred older folks were gathered to do something resembling Tai Chi, all in long pants and long sleeves, of course.
We were intending to do a full-day guided tour but our hotel safe was acting up, so we couldn't get away in time, and changed our plans for a half-day, afternoon tour.  After breakfast we headed out on the streets towards the nearby Shinjuku National Park, still an urban park but much bigger than the morning's and was supposed to have nice gardens.  We passed a few impressive, iconic buildings that became landmarks for Shinjuku when we were searching the skyline from other neighbourhoods...

Obviously I was pretty impressed with that one.  This one, too:

Saw a few interesting street sights on the way...

 No smoking comically huge cigarettes while walking!

Manhole covers seem to be a point of pride of different communities.  There were some quite fancy ones over the course of the visit.

Isn't there an icon for that?

As we were approaching the gate to the park I walked between a lamp post and the park fence and almost got knocked back by the spiderweb I encountered.  It was almost as tough as dental floss, and had a fairly big specimen in the centre (I saw bigger later, but as the first spider I saw on the trip and seeing as how I had just walked through it's web, I felt it was big enough):

That thing wrapped up in a web pouch is my wallet, just to give you an idea of the size.

Eventually we got to the park only to find that this one was actually closed due to the Dengue problem!

In the afternoon we set off on a commercial tour.  The first stop was the Hamarikyu-teien (Hamarikyu Gardens).  This property was the site of a Shogun's villa and had seawater pond as well as some Japanese Garden type stuff.  Very nice.  There was more to the property than we saw, but it was a pleasant greenspace and a nice first stop.

Next it was a trip up the river.  One of the most noteworthy things was the absence of graffiti on the walls facing the river...actually, don't believe I saw any graffiti anywhere during the trip: a nice change.

What? No grafitti?  Where's the freedom/selfish egotism?

The Tokyo Sky Weiner (aka SkyTree).

Asahi Beer HQ (supposed to look like a tankard of beer...with a wizzle?) and the SkyTree.

SkyTree and Asahi Beer HQ.  As can be seen from this view, the wizzle is detachable.  What is up with this neighbourhood?

The river trip dropped us off in a neighbourhood called Asakusa, where there is a pretty impressive Temple with amazing gates and a big strip of tourist shops.  The guide told us that something like 70% of Japanese are Buddhist and 80% are Shinto, so there is a lot of cross-talk between the two, and sometimes the shrines/temples are side by side.  I was rarely clear on which I was looking at...

Every Temple seems to have a gate, and each gate usually has two statues at the base.

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If my recollection of history is accurate, the nazi occupation of Japan was brief, but the impact was enormous...swastikas everywhere.  But, seriously folks, swastikas are slathered all over the buddhist temples, but that's because of a more ancient connection with Buddhism, which has used that symbol for ages...though I guess they let the copyright run out, which was a bit unfortunate.

The Temple mall...

Pagoda!

The Temple.

Love those roofs, as you will see...

Well, if that's not the Buddha, then I don't know who it is (and those two possibilities are roughly equally likely)

Pagoda!  The antenna is really starting to generate some clouds.

The sun was setting on Asakusa as we left, and the bus dropped us off in one of the more well-known electronics shopping districts (Yodobashi, i believe).  On the way we passed through a block long "fake food" district full of shops that supply restaurants with plastic replicas of food.  This guy was kind of the overseer:

In Yodobashi, we stopped in a giant robot-themed bar, but it was a bit disappointing as the theme didn't seem to go too much beyond the drinks being named after robots, and whatnot.  Sadly, there were no actual giant robots walking around and this meant that our secret hopes of being picked up in the giant hands of a giant robot were to go unfulfilled.
However, we did stop at big ol' electronic superstore which had 8-10 floors of pulsating electronic products just waiting to over-stimulate one.  It was kind of impressive in terms of volume and variety, though we never really laid eyes on quite as much neon as I thought we would.  After that we found an interesting Japanese restaurant in an alley and eventually managed through intricate pointing and grunting to order a delicious meal.