TKO from Tokyo

Just a smattering of photos from our August trip to Tokyo. It was magical! In that it was, y'know, really, really, really big. I mean, Osaka is, according to some (Osakans) the second largest metropolitan area in Japan, but in our experience most of that is anonymous suburbs -- we live right in the heart of the Minami (southern) half of downtown, and we're only about 10 minutes' walk from three of the cooler neighborhoods and 4 km from the heart of the Northern center. I guess, if the metaphor may be excused: we were all jumpin' around Japan, bopping turtles on the head, collecting coins, goin' "Hey, this is pretty cool," and then all of a sudden wandering into a pipe and coming out in OUTER SPACE. In 3D.

I...I need to work on my metaphor skills, admittedly.

Anyway, this about does it for the photos. More on the Faces-Book-Webs, but not that much more. Brief digression: we kind of hate tourists. I know, I know, we covered this already, but it bears mentioning again: we hate tourists, we hate being mistaken for tourists (which happens constantly), and our favorite pastime is seeing obvious tourists walk by with huge suitcases and clueless stares, then rolling our eyes and patting ourselves on the back so vigorously we pull our arm muscles. Since there's no more touristy action in the world than pulling out a huge camera and taking a picture of somebody else's city, we mostly limited our activities to looking cool and blending in (in much the same way that a penguin blends in on the savannah, but hey, we tried).

The Imperial Gardens are surrounded by a somewhat impressive moat. You may notice that the moat is pretty ineffective at repelling foreign invaders.

Watching out for snakes in the Imperial Gardens.

Surely some of the 10 most important of Tokyo's estimated 100 million skyscrapers.

Harajuku, where it's all going on.

Yep. Any given house in Japan. It's just that weird over here, promise.

Sampling local Tokyo cuisine.