We started our 6th day in Tokyo by taking a guided tour of the Imperial Palace. It was a free tour of the grounds, we just had to get approval beforehand and we did this by applying on the website.

This is the Chowaden Reception Hall. It’s where official state ceremonies and functions are held. This is where the Imperial family appears for every new year and for the Emperor’s birthday.

We were given English audio guides and the Japanese tour guide would shout out “Engrish audio guideo, number __!!” to tell you to listen to whatever audio track that corresponded to where we were in the tour. It was awesome.

Look at that pretty fence.

These look like Dr Seuss trees! Don’t know what exactly they are.. maybe bonsai or black pine, or something.. haha I tried to google it but I’m not sure.

Moats surround the palace grounds and this one is covered with lotus leaves.

Here are my friends being fascinated by the stone wall.

After the tour, we were free to explore the East Garden of the palace.

Look at that vine goooo!

I love the contrast of the city in the background with the large traditional stone walls.

I love lamp. This lamp is absolutely beautiful! Look at all the little details.

This looks like a bonsai tree.. but.. not sure! Biggest bonsai tree I’ve seen was barely a foot tall and it was already 500 years old! hmm

A sign we saw as we were leaving the Imperial Palace. We’re leaving! Geez ya don’t have to be so rude! Off we go to Ryoguko, aka Sumo town! HAI!

These two swans were swimming in the moat.

The sign said ‘No Bicycles Parking’.

Here we are at the Sumo Museum. You can buy tickets to watch a sumo match here! I wish we had the time to watch one while we were there.

At the Ryogoku train station. I took a stalkerish photo of these Sumo wrestlers buying tickets, they take the train too!

We managed to get a picture with these sumo wrestlers, or sumos in training, I duno! HAHAH oh man I used my ‘Point-and-speak’ and pointed to the ‘Can we take a picture’ diagram. He gave a weird look and just said “hai…?”(yes?) and after some embarrassing camera difficulties this is the result! I still feel silly for asking them, they must have thought we were some weirdo tourists! lol

This is our dinner for the day! We tried the tempura from the restaurant ‘Aoi-Marushin‘ in Asakusa. It is the largest tempura restaurant in Tokyo, it was pretty good and extremely filling. The tempura batter and taste was a bit different than what we were all usually used to though.

Here’s the famous ‘Kaminarimon’ (Thunder Gate) in Asakusa! A very popular destination for tourists and it’s where the Sensoji temple is located.

The street leading up to the temple was filled with shops where you can buy all sorts of Japanese Souvenirs.

In the marketplace I spotted these! I wasn’t supposed to take a picture as you can see with the sign there but I just had to sneak one! Uhhhhmm… what are these things?! Crazy booby jello treats?! wtf!? hahaha!

Here are some traditional Japanese souvenirs that I bought from Asakusa:

Daruma Nesting Dolls

Kokeshi Doll ♥

We got to the temple and got our fortunes! Here’s Cass shaking up the thing with fortune sticks inside. Whatever numbered stick that comes out of the tiny hole is what fortune you get! You find the drawer with your number on it and take your paper fortune.

Here is my fortune! It’s just regular. :T

Cass tying her fortune on the wire.

Now off to Akihabara aka Electric Town!

Akihabara is where you can find all sorts of electronic goods along and is also the center of the anime/manga, gaming, and animation culture.

We stopped at a KFC to rest our feet for a little bit and showed our patronage by ordering this. Turned out to just be flavoured icechips haha. Still refreshing nonetheless.

We went into this store called AsoBitCity and inside was a bunch of gamer/anime stuff, but on one of the floors I saw these pullip dolls! Normally I’m extremely creeped out by dolls, and actually the majority of these dolls here look quite creepy, but I simply fell in love with this one:

Her name is Maretti and I think she’s so adorable. I love her pink hair and her dress is the cutest! She has the moon in her eyes too :3 She’s still in her box in these pics so they’re not the best photos of her but I’ll probably take better pictures of her later! ^.^

Time to call it a day! These freakishly long posts directly reflect the extremely long days we had while we were there. So jam packed of fun times! Ahhh, off we go back to our hotel and resting for our last full day in Japan.. *tear* Next post (possibly last post of Japan) will be our day trip to Nikko!