Tokyo, Day 1

We wanted to provide Nicki's brother, David, some cool only-in-Japan experience during his limited tour over here, so we booked some rooms up in Tokyo and had a mini-vacation. And over the past few days, we tore through Tokyo like Godzilla on a rampage.

We arrived on Sunday morning and had a few hours to kill before our rooms would be ready, so we stowed our luggage at the check-in counter and hopped the train for Harajuku. Perfect timing. Sunday is the day when the colorful "Harajuku girls" are generally decked out in their unique outfits and decorations. I was actually really surprised to see so many of the kids out at play. Although it was a sunny day, the heat was excruciating and some of those costumes look uncomfortable even in normal weather. We did the tourist thing of standing around a looking, got a few pictures, and then hit the tracks down to Shibuya.

In Shibuya, we got the standard gratuitous picture of David with the statue of Hachiko, the legendary loyal dog of ancient lore. Afterwards, we crossed the busiest intersection in the world a couple times. The great thing about this week is that it's Obon week, so many Tokyoites were away from Tokyo, which made the intersection a little less crowded.

We finally got to a point where we couldn't stand the heat anymore, so we headed back to the hotel, checked in, threw on our swimsuits and hit the pool to cool off. That's Day 1 in a nutshell. Day 2-4 will be up soon. In the meantime, our pictures from Day 1 are up in the Gallery and dated 08/17/2007.