Mandarin Oriental Tokyo Chuo

Nagoya - Kyoto - Mt Fuji - Tokyo

Today we slept in and then Chris took me out to dinner to celebrate belated Valentine's Day. I didn't know where we were going, it was a surprise. We took the train to the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo which is am amazing hotel. We took the elevator to the top and were greeted and seated in a lounge area with fireplaces and an amazing view of the entire city. Chris told me it was a Tapas bar and we were there for one of the two nightly seatings, they have on seating at 6:00 and one at 8:30. The hos...

Nic arrived today and took the limo bus to the Takanawa Prince Hotel. We were in class and gave him detailed directions to our apartment, which is very confusing to find. We started to get a few calls from him and figured he was lost but couldn't seem to connect wit him on a payphone. We finally got a hold of him and found out he was sitting on a rock outside of an apartment which was not ours because he couldn't find the key I his (because of course, it was the wrong apartment). We finally g...

I was tired at work today but not TOO bad. Chris and Nic went to the Tokyo National Museum where they toured the 5 building complex dedicated to all things Japanese. The museum is in Uneo, which has a large park with numerous famous museums spread throughout. Apparently they had fun doing guys things, like ogling the 1,000 year old samurai swords and what not. Today we finally got confirmation that our friend Jeff and his girlfriend Darcy will be coming on Friday night and staying in out apar...

Today Chris and Nic got up early and headed over to the imperial palace for their official tour. Apparently it consisted of a long walk along the outside of the palace where a bevy of security guards/ tour guides carefully kept a group of 80 tourists in order. The official tour is the only way to get in the walls of the palace so affords the only good photo opportunities of the remnants of the famous Tokugawa Edo palace. Otherwise I guess the uninformative English audio guide and lack of acce...

We slept in a bit again today and the headed out to Odaiba Island- which you get to bvy taking the JR to Shimbashi and transferring to the Yurimome line to Odaiba. Odaiba is a new project on and reclaimed island in Tokyo bay which his very touristy but pretty fun for an afternoon. We ate at a place with a beautiful view of the Tokyo skyline in the Tokyo Decks mall. There are lots of restaurants with a view here and the hall portions of the mall are an outdoor boardwalk. From here we walked th...

We are flying to Singapore first for a few days, then flying to Lombok and then off to Bali. Here are a few things we have booked: http://www.quncivillas.com/ http://www.bhanuswariresort.com/index.h tml http://www.lomboksumbawa.com/rinjani/in dex.htm http://www.mandarinoriental.com/singapo re/ I will attempt to blog on the road but I'm not taking a laptop with me this time so there might be delays.

Tokyo is for sure the most modern and most sensual town on earth. The hip factor here is on the highest level and this busy but so well organised capital is the trendsetter among the global metropolis. The city's public transport system has to manage to offer an efficient train system for its 12 million population and indeed Tokyo has one of the most advanced, fast, safe and reliable transportation facilities in the world. A dozen different companies operate Railway lines in Tokyo like Japan ...