Cruising Around Tokyo

Alrighty, now to continue our adventures from Tuesday! :)… I have to add though that I’m writing this blog laying on a tatami mat on the floor, listening to the rushing river outside of our Ryokan (traditional style Japanese Hotel) room. No air conditioning, no traffic noises. Just us and Japan. ❤️

So… let me sum up what you should already know about our day yesterday. We went to a Shinto Shrine, the Imperial Palace Gardens and also to a Buddhist Temple! Now that you’re all caught up…

After enjoying my favorite stop of the day at the Buddhist Temple, we headed to the docks and hopped on a huge cruise ship! We, literally, cruised around Japan’s man made islands in the shape of a heart!! 💖

This turned out to be a very beautiful and calming voyage. We drank beer and took it all in (by taking a crap ton of pictures and selfies) and lounged around on the top deck.

After the cruise ended, our tour guide took us to the biggest of the man made islands, Odiaba. On the way there, she told us a pretty interesting story.

Apparently, when you’re growing up in Japan, their maps are drawn much differently… and by that I mean, Japan is drawn to be the center of the world! Smack dab in the center of their maps. 🙂 lol. Our tour guide said that she grew up thinking that Japan was the most important country… that is, until she was 16 and visited the US. She then realized that all countries think they are the center of the world!! 😆

We arrived on one of Japan’s (7?) man made islands. (Don’t quote me on that!!) Odiaba. Sadly, we didn’t spend much time here. There was a Statue of Liberty here… that we didn’t care much about… because there was also a, true to size, Gundum Wing robot. We rushed off to get our pics taken with him!

As we were nearing the end of our tour, we headed back to Tokyo and watching a beautiful Japanese dancer! I have a video uploaded to Facebook, if you’d like to watch it… but in this blog, I’ll add a picture.