Tokyo Overdrive - Part I

You know, it's not often that I think to myself "I overdid it."

I overdo things all the time.  Ask anyone that knows me.  But the likelihood that I'll be self-aware enough to look back on something (especially something that went well!) and admit that maaaaybe I redlined the engines a little much. . .'eh, it's not something I do.

I initially tried to write the headline for this post as a bulleted list of what happened.  Just trying to write out all the things we did made me tired.

We began with breakfast.   The only way to describe this breakfast is "super-extra".  I only took one picture, but I will let this picture convey how extra this breakfast was.

This is how the breakfast buffet provided us with honey.

Yes, really.

Stuffed to the gills with food, we meandered (trundled might be more apt) down to the Imperial Palace grounds, so that we could walk through the gardens.   The Emperor of Japan's primary residence is the palace, so it's not open to the public, but there's a very nice public garden that hosts the ruins of a small fortress and a few guard houses that were used in former eras, plus a really cool building called the Tōkagakudō, which is basically a private music hall for the imperial family--they have private concerts there occasionally.

The grounds of the garden were beautiful, as you might imagine, full of brilliant choices that made the garden a joy to walk through even in winter.  The beautiful building with the copper roof is the Suwa no chaya teahouse.

The gardens were lovely and after taking our time meandering through them, we stopped for a warm drink on the way to Tokyo station.

Everybody talks about the vending machines here and how they're crazy and they sell everything.  And it's true that there are some pretty epic machines here that sell some weird items (I'll try to collect a few pictures when I'm back in Tokyo before I leave).

But really, the thing that has my brain most intrigued so far is just the normal Kirin vending machines.

Because they all sell both cold (blue prices) and warm (red prices) drinks.

And in the winter, it turns out, every time I see a vending machine, I will seriously consider grabbing a warm can of Tully coffee or Royal Milk Tea to drink and warm my hands with.  It's shocking how effective they are at drawing my attention now that I know they sell warm stuff.


Anyway.

Off we went next to Tokyo station.  Tokyo station was built at the height of the Meiji period, when Imperial Japan had decided that it was going to play the worlds largest version of "anything (they) can do we can do better!").  To that end, they were scrambling to build their brand new rail system out, and Tokyo station was built to act as a nexus for those new railway lines.  It's a beautiful building that faces the Imperial grounds down a long, spacious boulevard.

We ducked inside next, and caught a train to Shibuya to get some Ramen for lunch and see the scramble and the shopping district.