Up a Tree & in a Tower

Since we hit Tokyo, we made the decision to bypass temples, shrines and castles in favour of some of Japan's quirky attractions. So today, we started by going to one of Tokyo's newest attractions: The Skytree.

This is a view of it by night from our hostel

The skytree is the tallest telecommunications tower in the world and the second tallest building in the world. It offers you panoramic views of the city from its two observation decks at 350m and 450m high. Reservations are hard to come by so we found ourselves queuing at 7:45am. The queues went really quickly so the pain of the early morning was soon rewarded. We shot up to the decks at an ear popping rate. Here's Tokyo waking up at 8:00am this morning.

Emma walking the glass floor and crying inside with fear

Our next mission was to find a coffee. It's quite tough to get a coffee in Japan before 11:00am because no cafes are open. The only place we could find this morning was stuck in some kind of warp. Green velvet chairs, a jukebox table, chain smoking grannies and a shopping channel on a bigscreen at the bar. Oddly enough, this coffee shop only appeared to offer 1 type of coffee- black coffee with milk (and it's safest to put sugar in it too).

Being able to walk from the remarkable to the weird in just a few streets, it's no surprise that our next stop was Hanayashiki "the old park with a smile". This rickety old amusement park with clunky rides is a relic theme park of the past and the oldest in Japan.

We released our inner children and ran about the park with a handful of ride tokens. We had chosen our first ride before stepping into the park: The Bee Tower!

This was followed up by riding on the juddery old rollercaoster built in 1953, a police car, a ship, a swan and on the back of a panda. As you can imagine, we both had an awesome time!

We also took the opportunity to visit our hostel rooftop. Our hostel is well situated next to the Sumida River.

We were quite tired out from all our jollies after that and settled for a more relaxing afternoon with a green tea and a strange brown cake we found in the supermarket. We're all geared up for our last two days in Toykyo. Watch this space!