Day 25 - Traveling to Tokyo

 

I woke up bright and early and got ready to head off to Tokyo. We headed to Shin-Osaka station and from there boarded the Shinkansen. The ride was about 2 hours total with some beautiful views throughout. Many of the students gathered on the left side of the train, hoping to catch an excellent photo of Mt. Fuji as we passed by. Eventually, we arrived at Tokyo station, which was a very difficult place to navigate. With many different platforms everywhere, each with countless different lines, Tokyo Station proved much more difficult to navigate then Osaka’s. Eventually, we left the station and headed to the hotel located not to far away.

               Because it was too early to check in, we dropped off some of our bags at the hotel and then went back to the station to get food before the rest of the day’s events. After arriving at the station we went to go find food and ended up at a French Café. I ordered a quiche, French onion soup, and some French Fries, which were pretty good. Unfortunately, we began to get behind on time for reaching the museum that we were going to next. Things got a bit tense between our group and we were pretty frustrated by the time we reached the museum. Fortunately, the lovely museum was a great place to calm the tension. There were many floors with different lovely exhibits that were each a wonder to walk through. Our group began at the aquatics exhibit, which was a nice starting point. We then went to a land nature exhibit full of different plant-life and animal-life that were cool and unique. We next entered a more modern technology exhibit full of different space tech. Many of the ideas demonstrated had some form of physical interaction for us to do, which made the experience even cooler. We ended the stop at the museum with a look at the Jurassic period, which was a pretty neat way to end the tour of the museum.

               After we left the museum, we headed back to the nearby station and grabbed some drinks from the Starbucks there as we were craving something cold to combat the extreme heat in Tokyo that day. We returned to the hotel, checking in before having a little bit of relaxing after a long day in Tokyo. After, getting a bit of rest, a few of decided we wanted to go get tonkatsu. We found a place nearby the station so we decided to head there. I ordered the Pork Katsu, which was very delicious and came with some rice, miso soup, salad, and some other vegetables. Overall, the meal was very cheap for the amount of food we were provided and was excellent overall. We ended the night returning to the hotel for some much needed sleep, excited for the field trip to Nikko the next morning.