tokyo, day two

we woke up yesterday at 3:30 am, waited for everything to open, and headed out to a "French-style" bakery for some breakfast. B had a banana cream black sesame roll and I had a sesame-chicken & gobou pastry, so we felt like we were back in Paris.

we walked down to the Imperial Palace grounds, which were still closed when we arrived. we waited patiently as the guard opened the complicated folding gate; when another couple came up and tried to go through before he was finished, he barked at them to wait and then politely gestured for us to head in first. this country is the best.

from there, we went on an adventure through the city's biggest metro station's underground malls, following the advice of an internet post about how to find a store that sells the widest variety of Kit Kat bars. we got one bag of Sake flavour and a box of Purple Sweet Potato ones. they tasted as weird as they sound.

we've got no pictures of the Intermediatheque, a trippy little natural history museum, or of the stores we visited in a neighbourhood called Ginza (a rice store with incredible food, an intimidatingly fancy green tea shop that gave us a free sample, and a craft store with beautiful fabrics and pottery). we ate lunch at a 7-11 (rice wraps and curry fritos), and visited a cool old Washi paper store.

our last stop was at the Edo-Tokyo museum, which was worth it for the architecture alone (plus the escalator that briefly flattened into a moving sidewalk halfway through the trip).

inside Don Quixote Bookstore (no books)

servants' entrance to the Imperial Palace grounds

Imperial Palace East Gardens

Imperial Palace East Gardens

guard house in front of the inner palace grounds

Imperial Gardens, continud

JP Tower's rooftop garden (no dancing or sports)

Tokyo station

Edo-Tokyo Museum

Accomplishments for Women in the Edo Period

fish-shaped snack called Taiyaki (no actual fish involved)