Japan day 6 Imperial Palace, Science Museum and Akihabara

Kaitlyn and my's favorite sign outside our home station of Kanamachi. 

We found stamps today! had to borrow some paper as I left their journals at home. 

kit-kat cake at the department store

It was just the 4 of us today with no kiwako or satoru, so we had a few wrong turns on the train - nothing too bad, just one extra transfer.  When we got to Tokyo station, we decided it was time for lunch and once again decided to hit up the downstairs of a local department store.  We loaded up and walked to the imperial grounds for a picnic.  we were a bit derailed by the area - we have been touring in residential areas where there are tons of shops and combinis (convenience stores) and had planned on hitting one up for matt's lunch, but Tokyo station is in the midst of a financial district - lots of big glass buildings and wide streets and lots and lots of people in black suits!  we managed to find a Lawson store in the downstairs of an office building so matt could get milk and we could have our picnic!  I had gotten a sandwich at one of the more popular places at the department store - all kids of sandwhiches from tuna to blt to mango and cream cheese and teriyaki!  (I got egg salad - I know really exciting). 

One of the buildings on the imperial palace grounds. we weren't actually able to go onto most of the grounds.  there was a two hour walking tour - but the kids voted science museum instead!

Science museum! the kids had fun in spite of almost all the signs being only in Japanese.  We were there for about two hours and matt probably could have spent another two!

we've been slowly trying may of the local vending machine options.  we couldn't decide if this was a picture of a cherry or an apple - it's apple - sort of like sparking cider. 

After the science museum we took the metro to akihabara - anime district/electric town.  matt jumped right in and got a tutoring on the newest toy gadget.  either we are really missing something in translation or it's a really lame toy.  but that didn't stop matt from doing it twice, once coming and once going! 

I didn't expect there to be canals in Tokyo!

finally tried a taiyaki! though this was not a traditional - made with croissant dough instead and you could get with traditional red bean paste or custard.

electric town - yes, it was just as load and crowded as you would expect - more so than this picture really projects.

these are very prevalent - I have been amazed that matt hasn't really gotten into them - which is good since most are around $4. 

grumpy cats! - they had lots and lots of stores that just had these - like crane game kind of thing - we let matt play once - he happily would have spent all the rest of his money here!

we had dinner on the 8th floor of a large store that had seven floors of electronics! and the floors were huge! as matt said - the stores are either huge or tiny - many of the stores we saw today were tiny little hobbit warren types of stores that made me very claustrophobic!  Kaitlyn and I had spaghetti - I had mine with scambled eggs and garlic!  tony had fish and matt happily had his plain white rice with soy sauce.  we stopped for a crepe for desert. 

made it home on the train.  I thought we would take the bus home from the station, but the bus wasn't there when we got there and there was a line, so they voted to walk.  picked up this orange coke from a vending machine on the way home - we decided it wasn't bad, but we would prefer to stick with regular coke.