Matt got up early to run a very popular 5K loop that circles the Imperial Palace moat. The plan was to take the subway to skip about third of the loop and jog back to the hotel, which was another 2 miles. Unfortunately, Matt was in the flow and absorbed by the beauty of the run that he ran the whole loop, making a 5 mile run into a 7 mile run. But it was a great experience.
While Matt was running, Lily, Melanie and Charles got breakfast at the 7-Eleven and Belinda blogged.
We met up with MoJo and started the day by going to Shibuya to experience another complicated subway terminal, see the famous crossing, see the Hachikō dog statue, and do a little shopping before going to a baseball game in the afternoon.
Hachikō was a dog that faithfully returned to the station every day and waited for the return of his deceased owner for more than nine years until his own death in 1935.
Shibuya crossing can have over 5000 people crossing on a single walk signal, but since we went early on a Saturday, it was not as busy as it could have been. Still an impressive sight from above and an iconic moment to make the crossing ourselves. It was another reminder we were in the largest city in the world.
Then we went shopping at the Shibuya Parco mall, a high end mall with lots of trendy shops. The craziness was on the top floor as the Nintendo and Pokémon stores were far more busy then the crossing. All Charles wanted was a couple japanese Pokémon packs, which the store didn’t have…weird. Matt ended up buying a really cool Godzilla t-shirt from the Godzilla store that was far less busy and way cooler.
We continued our meandering thru the mostly pedestrian shopping streets of Shibuya and had a stop at a Shake Shack and MEGA Don Quijote for some more amazing Japanese nail clippers and other fun souvenirs.
Around noon we left Shibuyu and headed a little bit north to the baseball game in the Tokyo Dome, which was a pressurized dome like the Metrodome of old. The game was the Tokyo Giants versus the Chunichi Dragons. There were a lot of similarities to an American game, but the differences were the most fun to observe. The fans from both teams in their sections were singing and chanting the whole game- whoever was up to bat were the fans that were singing. There were very hard working beer girls, which carried a small keg on their back up and down the stairs and always smiling. And it wasn’t just beer, it wouldnt be Japan without freshly poured sake without leaving your seat. In the 5th inning a stadium worker brought trash bags into the aisles and everyone threw away their trash from the first half of the game. The 7th inning stretch was not “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” but a song called TKO which had similar movements to “YMCA”. And finally while there were hotdogs being sold in the stadium, the fan race on the field was a sushi race instead of the American sausage version. One of our missions for the game was to try many exciting foods in helmets which included a helmet full of hotdogs. Tokyo unfortunately lost 1-5 but it was a fun game and was a great way to beat the summer heat.
After the game we went back to the hotel and ended up eating dumplings and noodles at a hole in the wall shop near the hotel. We were looking for a sushi place and had a reservation at one until we realized that the entire menu was only mackeral. After dinner we took MoJo to see the same shrine and Tokyo Tower we saw the morning before, but this time they were both lit up so prettily in the night sky.
Awesome!!!