This morning we woke up to a lot of rain. We had a complementary breakfast in the hotel cafe. There were these croissants that were so buttery and flaky. I forgot to get a picture of them but I will try tomorrow if they have them. Our plan for today was to go to a Shinto shrine and the Imperial Palace gardens. First we had to stop at the local convenient store to pick up some umbrellas. It was just our luck that this is one of the coldest days they’ve had this time of year. Many places in Japan are seeing snow so we are lucky that we just had rain. I guess we had to bring the cold with us from Idaho.
Once we got our umbrellas we headed to the train station and then on foot to the shrine. The cherry blossoms are finishing up here and they are beautiful. There is a war museum at the shrine. We spent a few hours there. It was a good use of our time to get warm and out of the rain. It’s interesting to see the war history of Japan. Even more interesting was getting a different perspective on WWII.
After the shrine we were pretty hungry and walked to a restaurant. We both ate Mabodofu. It’s something that I’ve learned to make at home but I really wanted to taste what an authentic one was like. It was delicious. They gave us a big bowl of it. It’s about as much as I normally make for my whole family. As we look around it seems like everyone was finishing all that they ordered and I don’t know if it is unkind to not eat everything. So I ate all of it and was so stuffed by the end.
After that we walked through the Imperial Palace Gardens. On the way there we stopped at a public toilet and yes I took a picture of the public toilets in the women’s bathroom. It is definitely an adventure. The gardens are beautiful and we took our time walking around. I wish it hadn’t been so cold and wet because I know we would have spent the rest of the day there if we could. However, our shoes were squishy with water and we were freezing so after a couple of hours we made our way back to the hotel to dry off and get warm. Even though it was rainy and cold we had a good experience. Tomorrow we head for Kyoto
