Thanksgiving in Tokyo-Part I

Konnichiwa!
One of the best parts of living overseas is the ability to travel to so many great places.  Before we even moved here, we made a long list of destinations and Tokyo was up at the top.

Since Jeff had a 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving, we decided to take the bullet train into Tokyo and enjoy the city.

And it's.
Amazing.

We took the earliest local train out of Misawa on Thanksgiving morning.  The train was full of high school kids in uniform, a few people making their morning commute, and the two of us.  It was only about a 15 minute train ride to meet the Shinkansen (bullet train) in Hachinoe.  We had heard good things about the bullet train and it did not disappoint.  The seats were roomy (much bigger than on an airplane) and it was a smooth 3 hour ride.

Once in Tokyo Station, we needed to catch the subway to get to our hotel in Roppongi.  Thank goodness we met a sweet, old Japanese guy who spoke excellent English to help us find our way out or we would have spent the entire weekend in there.
Tokyo Station is GIANT.

Inside Tokyo Station:
Shinkansen
JR trains (local)
Subway station
department store
boutique shopping
hotel
Starbucks

Ok, so maybe a weekend in there wouldn't be too terrible. ;)

{Tokyo Station}

We made it to Roppongi and to our hotel.  This area of town has a lot of restaurants, bars, shopping areas and was a block away from the subway so it made getting around the city very easy.  We checked in, dropped off our bags and began our adventure!

{on an overpass}

First stop...food.
Tokyo has every type of food you could want.  Since we can have good Japanese any day, we wanted anything but noodles and sushi.   Right around the corner from our hotel was this small Turkish sandwich stand.  It was awesome!!

{Happy Thanksgiving!}

After lunch we spent the rest of the day exploring....
Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi is a large shopping area connected to the Four Seasons hotel and other businesses with most of the stores underground.  Outside they had 10-15 different Santa statues that you could take pictures with...they were so cute!!  I wanted to take a picture with all of them!

I chose this one.....

{Hey there Santa}

We walked around Roppongi for the next couple of hours checking out the neighborhood until going up to settle into our room and get ready for dinner.....

Alice in Wonderland awaits!!!

You'll see.. ;)