Yanaka

What a long day!  We walked through the lovely laid back neighborhood of Yanaka for the majority of the day.  Yanaka offers many shrines and temples along with quaint shops and restaurants.   We had a great day and purchased some lovely handmade bamboo products and high quality Japanese green tea.  And can I just say for the being such a ginormous city, Tokyo is extremely clean.  I mean, I know in the US we trash our cities but it's even better than the large cities in Italy.  I'm tired tonight, so you'll just have to get by with the captions of my photos instead of a lengthy description of our day.

This a the bronze Buddha statue from the Tennoji Temple that dates from the 1690s.

Stumbling through ordering in this local restaurant paid off with my awesome tempura soba lunch. (still perfecting my slurp :-P).

Orange torii walkways at the Nezu Shrine. Unfortunately the main shrine is under restoration.

On our way back to our hotel area we stopped at an art supply store and the Shinjuku Gyoen (garden) Who would guess that this 143 acre park is right outside one of the busiest sections of Tokyo? The parks in Tokyo totally put NYC to shame!

The Shinjuku Gyoen contains two traditional Japanese Teahouses where you are served traditional Japanese green tea (froth and all) with a sweet.  (And yes the hostesses wear kimonos).