Imperial Palace and Shibuya!

We started the day out with Liam waking the children with his new fog horn app, really?!? I made sure I was up before he used it on me, it would not have gone over well. The kids have now downloaded the app to every ipod or ipad we have and have been using it all day, someone please remind me to get Liam back for that.  

Imperial Palace is where the Japanese Emperor and his family live. It is located in the Chiyoda area of Tokyo. It is a very large park with gardens and many outlying buildings. You are able to walk around the gardens, but the actual palace is only open to the public twice a year, I think. It was amazing to see. It reminded me of Central Park in New York. A massive green space in the middle of a large city. We walked around a couple hours and only saw a small portion of it. It was very hot and muggy but we had fun exploring. 

We then got back on the train and went to Shibuya, Tokyo which is kind of like saying we went to SoHo in New York. We walked around Shibuya for hours and saw at most an area of about 5 blocks. The shopping is amazing, the options are overwhelming at times. We end up doing a lot of looking but not a whole lot of buying. 

There was also so many little places to eat at it was hard to decide. We settled on a place where you pay and pick your meal on a machine that looks a lot like a bank machine. You then sit down at what we would call a bar and hand your food ticket to the guy behind the counter and they bring you your food.  We have been here almost 2 months and have tried many different places to eat, some cheap like 100 yen sushi some not so much but we have never had a bad meal. No matter what we try it is very good. This adventure ended up being a very long day about 9 hours of walking and the kids did great.   Some over tired giggling and silliness but at least they were not yelling at each other.

The train again Kol can not get enough pictures of them.

Kol taking a picture of himself in the train window as it went by.

Japanese men dancing in front of a camera on the street. A couple of  local girls where laughing along with us.

This is the moat that surrounds the Imperial Palace grounds

Liam says "Evelyn give me a pose"

7 story Forever 21 store Hannah has been dying togo to.

Street crossing in Shibuya. All the cars are stopped at once and people flood the street in every which way to cross. It is awesome to see this is on a Sunday, I can't imagine what it is like during the week.

The same intersection at night.

This is the 7 floor guitar store. We had to check out.

The kids posing in one of the clothing stores that looked down onto the street.