Japan - Day 8

Today we headed to Asakusa to visit Senso-ji, an ancient Buddist temple. We weren't the only ones - there were people everywhere! Shanon proved that he is definitely more of a castle person than a temple person. Right as we were standing in front of the impressive temple, with tourists all around us snapping pictures, he turned to me and said, "Which way do we go now?". When I pointed out that we were, in fact, already at our destination he looked up at the temple and said, "Is this it?!".

We had lunch at Dennys. Now before you roll your eyes and say, "Rachel, trust you to go all the way to Japan to eat at Dennys!", I would like to point out that Dennys in Japan has quite a different menu than what we have at home. In fact this Dennys is where Shanon tried miso soup for the first time. It's an experience he probably won't be repeating.

After lunch we went to the Imperial Palace East Gardens. They were beautiful and well worth a visit. Unfortunately it began to rain as we entered the gardens, and only got worse the further we walked. Since we were both without jackets or an umbrella eventually it got so cold and unpleasant that we had to leave. We plan to go back later in the week if the weather improves.

We dried off and warmed up in Doutor Coffee, a chain of coffee shops which we call Doctor Coffee thanks to an initial error on our part when we first saw the sign. We're obviously getting blind in our old age! It must make the locals giggle to hear us say "Ooh look, there's a Doctor Coffee!". And we say it a lot as these coffee shops seem to be on pretty much every block.

In the evening we headed back out into the rainy weather, with jackets on this time. We went and had dinner at Jonathan's, which was similar to the Dennys we had lunch at. Shanon ordered another Japanese meal, but had to leave all his corn as his plate as he couldn't figure out how to eat it with his chopsticks. I surprised Shanon and ordered completely in Japanese tonight. While it's pretty easy to get by with no Japanese whatsoever, I have found my basic knowledge of Japanese extremely handy. It's been especially helpful to be able to read menus and place names.