Happy Birthday to us

For our birthday Mack and I decided to head up to Tokyo for the weekend. There is a military hotel up there, The New Sanno, which we'd heard lots of good things about - the key is making reservations at least 6 months out, and in some cases a year!! We packed up our backpacks and headed out to take the bus, two trains and subway.

This is right on the edge of our neighborhood - we love our place!! While we were waiting for the bus we saw a Japanese hearse - this is amazing. Check out the gold.

We got all the way up to Tokyo which took about 2 hours. The hotel is in a nice part of town called Hiroo, lots of nice shops and restaurants. This is also where a ton of the embassies in Tokyo are located which probably accounts for all the nice places!

We checked in and were pleasantly surprised, the military has done a very nice job of setting up a hotel. The rooms are small but nice and they have some nice cafes and restaurants. We had quite the view of Tokyo:

We could not believe how skinny some of these apartment buildings were. Here is a close up with a guy standing on his patio so you have a better idea of the width. These are like 4 strides across.

We were so hot and sweaty from our travels that we thought we'd just relax for a minute before heading back out into town. My poor overworked hubby was still like this an hour and a half later:

I figured he probably deserved a nap, but I could only wait so long!! We headed to one of our favorite places in Tokyo for dinner and drinks - the Meguro Tavern. This is a great British pub, the food is outstanding and they have a big selection of drinks. The atmosphere is very authentic - at least I think so, but I've never been to a pub in Britain so I'm just guessing. The owner is from the UK and has been here around 30 years. I went all the way to Tokyo to get Shepherd's pie :)

Mack and I had a nice little evening there.

I love traveling the subways because we always see the most interesting ads and signs.

I'm not entirely sure what they want you to do at the beach but it sure looks suspicious!!

The next morning we decided to be all cultural and stuff so we went to Ueno park which is sorta like Central Park in New York or Balboa in San Diego. There are a bunch of museums and the Tokyo Zoo. First we headed to the Tokyo Museum of Western Art which was so fantastic. We saw everything from Rembrandt and Picasso to my very favorite artist of all times, Monet. I just had to sneak a quick picture.

We wandered around in there for a while and then decided we'd had enough artisy fartsy stuff. Out in the park we ran into quite the show! A Japanese fiddler just going at it! This guy was really incredible, but boy oh boy does he need a new fashion advisor!

We went to the Tokyo National Museum which was also pretty interesting. We saw a lot of old Japanese stuff. Yes that's the technical term.

It was kinda crazy because we actually ran into - or walked by rather - Perez Hilton, the famous blogger. I didn't want to bother him though so I didn't get a picture, although I have to say that would have been cool to have on my blog. Right near Ueno park is a mass of food stalls, fake clothing and purse stalls, produce stands, etc.

Heading back to the hotel we saw a bunch of our favorite things - girls in kimonos! I love that they still wear these outfits for special occasions as I think they are just beautiful. I do think it is interesting to see such old fashioned outfits on such modern transportation:

Saturday night we went to the Japanese grill at the hotel, it was wonderful, I highly recommend it to anyone visiting. The food and the service was great.

We capped off our birthday weekend with a trip to the Sunday brunch - not particularly great, but good enough.

I think it was a great birthday for both of us - Happy Birthday to us!