We flew back into Tokyo and met up with Grace and Ted along with a friend of ours, Lynette, who traveled with us and who took the girls to Fukuoka and then South Korea after Ted and I split up from them in Kyoto.
Tokyo was mainly souvenir shopping along with seeing a couple of temples and shrines.
We also were able to get tickets to the Studio Ghibli museum. If you like their films it’s well worth it. No pictures allowed inside. Tons of artwork from the films including a room that’s covered floor to ceiling in sketches and snippets of storyboards.
One night after dinner we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building. It was really neat.
While in Tokyo we took a side trip up to Yomiyuri Land. Sadly their main attraction, Bandit, was under maintenance for the entire duration of our trip. The girls went on the Looping Starship, it’s your typical Viking Ship ride; but it does a full 360. (Apparently there’s only about 6 left operating in the world, if you want to try it go to Kings Dominion.) Beautiful country side though. It was also fascinating to me that the Japanese amusement parks don’t have you exit through a gift shop, don’t have pictures of you on the rides they try to sell you, an typically don’t have t-shirts of the rides.
