Tokyo

We went to Tokyo for a long weekend with two couples from our apartment building. We had the good fortune of going with a couple who had lived in Tokyo for 10 months as Canadian Expats prior to moving to Beijing. We even got to travel out of the new Terminal 3 airport building from Beijing (out trips to the US still leave from the old terminal 2).

We left on a Thursday night and got in too late for the Express Bus or trains into Tokyo. Fortunately, Air China had provided buses to everyone free of charge to the center of Tokyo. The ride was over an hour. We then took taxis to our hotel in Roppongi area, near the US Embassy. Below is a view from our hotel which had a couple of elevated highways right outside (a little noisy).

This is a street scene in the Roppongi area which is known for catering to the foreign devils (expats). At night we had to walk by a couple of busy street corner where men would solicit you to visit gentlemen clubs. They did not care that we were with our spouses.

We did a lot of shopping, eating, walking, riding subway and taxis throughout the weekend. The meals were spectacular and just seeing the city was a treat. It was so different than Beijing (clean, people queued in lines, little car horn blowing, good air quality, no spitting, people spoke quietly, little talking on cell phones (lots of text messaging going on)

We happened to walk by this corporate sign. This will be a collector item some day since the branding for J.P. Morgan will be changing this summer back to the old branding and losing the octagon.

We ate at Gordon Ramsay's Restaurant (Hell's Kitchen for you Reality TV watchers).

The ladies were given a complimentary sparkling wine for their meal.

Amazingly Krispy Kreme had a 45 minute queue the first day we went by it. The last day which was very rainy the queue was a manageable 15 minutes.

We did have a couple of good Japanese meals as well.....