Almost Nearly Goodbye, Tokyo

It's 7:30am here on Wednesday and 3:30pm in Seattle on Tuesday. Jer is asleep for another half hour and I just got done eating at Tribeks restaurant in the hotel lobby. The lobby is on the 20th floor of this building and has fantastic views of Shinjuku Gyoen (a very large park) and the city -- much the same as the view from our room only 10 floors down, imagine that.

I had their breakfast buffet, which was an interesting mix of food options. Not the best meal of the trip, but not bad either. I wanted to experience it but next time I have 2,194 yen burning a hole in my pocket I will explore a few side streets and find some plastic food models that look good.

Last night Jer and I went out in Shinjuku with the fisheye lens and I did some night shooting of all the colorful and brightly lit skyscrapers. Then we wandered over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building to the North Observatory. You can ride the elevator up to the 45th? floor for a gorgeous (free) view. There's a bar up there and a shop. I set up my mini tripod and remote control and photographed what I could through the glass. Occasionally we saw lightning. That was about 9pm. It was still pretty crowded for 9pm on a Tuesday, as were the streets. I think I know why so many salary men have perfected the art of sleeping on trains.

I'm hoping to ride out to Tamachi Station this morning and walk to the Rainbow Bridge to photograph the Tokyo skyline. My airport limousine leaves at 12:55pm and the flight is at 4:55pm. Then I go through a time warp and arrive at 9:30am the same day. Still blows my mind.

Anyway, thank you for reading. Eventually there will be pictures. I think so far I've shot around 1200 pictures. I was hoping for more but I did the best I could do in 4 days. :)