June 26, 2016 Tokyo

June 26, 2016- Tokyo

Our first stop was the Tokyo-Edo museum. It is an amazing museum that had some prehistoric finds from the area, but mostly covered the Edo period from about the 1600 until the present. Tokyo used to be called Edo and the Tokugawa Shogunate moved the government to Edo in the 1600's. Prior to this time, Edo was a small fishing village, but once the shogun moved in, it became a bustling town. The daimyo, feudal lords, had to travel to Edo every other year to pay tribute to the shogun. Also the families of the daimyo were expected to live in Edo, basically being held hostage by the shogun. This was how the shogun kept control of the daimyo. Also, since the daimyo were expected to travel to Edo every other year, they put out a huge expense to make this trip. This was another way the shogun kept control. Another interesting thing is that since the daimyo's family lived in Edo, the heir to the Daimyo never really formed bonds with the people in their feudal domain. They had more of a connect to Edo and the exciting lives there.  This also was another form of control.

Pot from Jomon period in Japan (14,000-300 BCE)

Large Scale Model of Edo period house

Small model of bridge into Edo

Me lifting a set of waste buckets. They were heavy

Edo bookseller

Cute kids we met

The museum traced, in great detail, the evolution of Edo. Lots of small dioramas of what life would be like in Edo during the Tokugawa Shogunate and also after the Meji restoration when then emperor came back to power.

Our next stop was the Asakausa Kannon temple. Another Buddhist Temple in the middle of Tokyo. It was a sea of people and outside there was a huge shopping street, Nakamise Shopping Street, where you could get any Japanese souvenir you wanted. They are famous for their giant rice crackers, so I had to try them of course. We headed off to lunch at a local tempura restaurant. Then drove around Tokyo to do some sightseeing. Finally, we attended two lectures, 1st about the economy in Japan and the 2nd one was about the evolution of manga in Japan and the US.

Asakausa Kannon Temple

Back to the hotel and then we went out to an amazing sushi dinner. I've never tasted such good sushi and it was pretty cheap too. I'm a fatty tuna convert. Back to the hotel because we had to leave our hotel at 7:15am the next morning for our trip to Sendai on the bullet train.