Yoyogi Park & Imperial Palace

This weekend we explored the city. On Saturday we went to the Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi Park (Click here to see the pictures). Michael had been once before (you can check out pictures from his trip here). I really enjoyed the Meiji Shrine - it's very peaceful and shady - which is great in the big, hot, humid city. After the park, we had lunch in a little cafe in Harajuku, a neighborhood just outside the park, and then walked down to Shibuya. Shibuya is probably the area you think of when you think of Tokyo. If you've ever seen the movie "Lost in Translation" you know what I am talking about. It basically looks like Time's Square on steroids. There are TONS of people, and enormous billboards.

In Shibuya we visited a great store called Tokyu Hands, which is 8 floors of almost anything you could possibly want to buy. They carry everything from kitchen utensils to leather working tools. We bought some wire and hooks to hang pictures in the apartment (an adventure to be covered in a later post).

On Sunday we visited the Imperial Palace and the attached gardens. You can't actually go into the Palace, but the Gardens are huge (and admission is free!). It was hot, yet again, but we had a great time enjoying the outdoors.

We ended the day by grocery shopping in our new favorite grocery store. It's a short walk from our house and generally has reasonable produce (hard to find here in Tokyo) and fresh fish. Our biggest prize of the weekend was from the grocery, where we bought a HUGE bunch of bananas for LESS THAN $3.

Needless to say, if anyone has any really great banana recipes, please send them our way!