Busy Tokyo

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We just had a couple of days in Tokyo. We went to see the Imperial Palace gardens, Harajuku (this place where the crazy youths hang out and get dressed up in these crazy outfits), Meiji-ji shrine and Shinjuku one day. The next day we headed out to see Mt Fuji at Kawaguchi-ko, this lake area near the bottom of the mountain. It was very picturesque but the mountain gets more hazy from about lunchtime and so the camera does not seem to have picked up the mountain from the top of the cable car very well!

I was pretty freaked out when we went to this place for lunch where you cook skewers of food over a charcoal pit in the floor and were presented with a live fish on a skewer - you were supposed to wait for it to die then cook it. Put me off food for a bit.

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Photos

Tokyo Imperial Palace
It is enclosed by big stone walls and moats so this is one of the few places you can see it

Imperial Palace Gardens
Looking over the city

Guard Quarters
Imperial Palace - not so high security for the guards' quarters!

Mum breaching palace garden security
"The gate isn't supposed to keep people out!" ... and yet no one else seemed to go in there! No wonder they have thick stone walls.

Japanese flowers outside teahouse
Imperial Palace gardens

Where's Betty?!
Imperial Palace gardens

Fi by the pond
Imperial Palace Gardens

Tokyo International Forum
An interesting building. I made Mum go down and come up the escalator just for this photo. hahaha

Harajuku youths
On Sundays they get on the weirdest clothes they can find and go and pose for photos.

Another youth at Harajuku
I tried really hard to find this outfit... not

Yoyogi Park
Leading up to Meiji Temple

Meiji Temple
I think this was a wedding

Tokyo Tower
Kind of reminds me of a tower I visited in another city?!

Mt Fuji
From the top of the cable car by Lake Kawaguchi

Lake Kawaguchi
Looking down to Kawaguchi-ko from the cable car

Weird icicles
At top of hill by Kawaguchi-ko

Mum outside the gross restaurant
Nice building... yes, cooking skewers over charcoal pits seems like fun...

Inside the gross restaurant
...but the food was somewhat unappetising after the fish incident

Mum inside the gross restaurant
Mmmmmmm.... tentacle anyone?!

Tokyo neon
A street in Shinjuku