The Georges in Tokyo: Sanja-sama Shrine, Girl's Night Out, and Saying Good-bye

Aright, so we have an extra day to do some touring in Tokyo. Larry and Jack actually had the day off because it was the beginning of Golden Week in Japan. (Golden Week is pretty much a big deal in Japan. There are several holidays in a row, so it's common to take the whole week off of school and work there) Here's a link with more information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_(Japan)

The crowd near the Sanja-sama Shrine

We decided to head over to the Sanja-sama Shrine, or the Shrine of the 3 Gods. They had a TON of shopping surrounding the temple grounds and, man, was it CROWDED! Being the beginning of Golden Week we were packing the streets like sardines! It was quite crazy! There were a lot of interesting shops so with four adults and four kids, it was hard to stick together, so we split up for a bit and did our own shopping, Deb got a cool kimono robe and I bought the boys some souvenir shirts, Spencer picked a Dragon one and Elliott picked a shirt with the Japanese symbol for Number One (we think!) ;)

Modeling the shirts the boys bought (and the
ninja headbands from the 1000 Yen Store)

Large paper lanterns at the entrance to the temple grounds

Close up, so cool!

The boys hamming it up in front of a really
 cool building on the temple grounds

View looking out of the temple

Beautiful Gold Shrine

One of the statues of a god protecting the entrance to the grounds

These guys were a bit creepy! We only saw two,
so I wondered where the third one was?

I thought this was an interesting shot of a typical street of shops

This guy was doing a magic show. He was great!

When we met at the temple it was quite impressive. We threw some coins into the offering box and observed the massive amounts of gold they had on display. Impressive. We then looked around the impressive grounds, had some lunch did a bit more window shopping and traveled back to the Kruse's house.

The boys found a photo op!

That night Christina and I decided to check out a few things on our own. We decided to start our evening in Shibuya and see the famous Shibuya Crossing. There were some interesting shops around there too. Then we headed to Yoyogi Park, where Harajuku Street is with a ton of fun shopping. We stopped at the 1000 Yen store (which is a like a Dollar Tree on crack) and checked out four floors of cheap novelty and necessary items. Yep, we bought stuff there!

Shibuya Crossing from an overpass

A shot from inside Shibuya Crossing

Getting ready to cross!

Crowded shopping on Harajuku Street

Moving on, we stopped at clothing stores, shoe stores, saw some familiar names like Gap and H&M, and saw some rather odd stores as well. Christina was explaining that some people over in Tokyo have a sort of obsession with baby doll dresses. I would describe the look as trampy colonial. I took a couple of pictures before I was told that I couldn't. What do you think?

Interesting outfits

I don't get it...

Would you wear this stuff?

Along our way, we found a cute Italian café overlooking the shoppers for dinner. Great people watching there. We finished off our night by having a drink and dessert at the corner coffee shop on the way home from the subway. What a great way to end our fantastic girls' night!

Good-bye hugs!

The next day was spent packing, saying good-byes and heading back to the airport by car. The flight went super smooth and the boys slept almost a good night's sleep (although Momma could not, for the life of me, get to sleep) and were ready and raring to go when we landed at 2:30 p.m. in Houston. We even made it to Spencer's baseball game that evening!

Back at the airport

Grandma Deb suggested I take a photo of the bidet,
and she was right. These ultra cool toilets were a
highlight of the trip. Cars 2's description of
them was pretty accurate!

And who doesn't love this sign? :)

What a WONDERFUL trip! What great memories! Thanks again, Kruses and Grandma Deb for coming along with us!