#pandasan

[queenart-hur]

“Who is this girl?” Indeed.

[japanicked]

Noryo No Yube

Japanese word of the day: Chōchin - paper lantern

Last weekend I read about a paper lantern festival taking place in the moat of the Imperial palace. Sounded like a cool experience so we booked a hotel, loaded up the kids and headed to Tokyo. The first night we got in we went and explored Yoyogi park, the Mejiji shrine and Harajuku. The next day we went Akihabara which is the tech, gaming and anime district of Tokyo. Jay and I took turns exploring some very entertaining anime shops. One of us generally had to be outside with the kids because of “great” things like this:

And this is a relatively tame item.

We also stumbled across this absurd giant wearable Panda head which the kids found hilarious so we bought it. Then the kids took turns wearing it around Tokyo and basically making everyone’s day.

Everyone kept shouting "Panda san" and waving.

Next it was off to Tokyo station where we were looking for sweet treats. Took us two years but we finally tried Tokyo bananas. I’ll tell you all about that in the next post though.

Finally we headed over to the Imperial Palace moat for the lantern show and of course by that time the camera died. My poor phone tried valiantly to step in but it just wasn't the same. Still, here are some pictures of the night. 

I may not have gotten any good shots but it was pretty surreal to see people in traditional Japanese dress floating chōchin on the Imperial Palace moat. A little slice of the past displaced and on display for us right there in Tokyo.

I really love living here.