Japan Senior Trip . Day 6 . New Sanno breakfast, Akasaka and Sensoji Temple, Odaiba and Joypolis

Today was a fun day filled with nostalgia, cultural and play. We started out by heading to the New Sanno hotel in Hiroo where we enjoyed a fabulous breakfast buffet. This amazing hotel is for military, retired military and government employees and we spent a lot of time there when we lived in Yokosuka. It was our home away from home. The kids LOVED the breakfast buffet, especially the French toast and the omelettes. We would occasionally order breakfast to our room and we would always ask for the special strawberry jam. Today’s breakfast did not disappoint. I think Andrew ate 5 French toast slices in under a minute. Then he went back for more. I got my special strawberry jam so that made me happy. 
After a quick stop in the souvenir shop after breakfast we headed up to see the construction that was happening on the Tokyo LDS Temple. It was pretty crazy to see that the entire temple was under construction and the church building next door was totally gone. It will be exciting to see the finished product. Since the LDS wards are now meeting in Senzokuike and Kichijoji (which are both too far for us to want to travel in church clothes) we opted for a nice walk in Arisugawa park across from the temple. It was nice to have some quiet reflection there. 

After finishing up our nastalgia part of the day in Hiroo, we hopped on the subway and made our way to Asakusa to see Sensoji Temple as our cultural part of the day. This was one temple we hadn’t been to before but a popular temple to visit by both locals and tourists. It was completely packed. We started at Kamainarimon gate and walked through Nakamise dori which is the street lined with shops leading to the main temple. We found lots of various gifts here for the kids. After finally getting to the main temple we passed under the main gate called Hozomon and the Goju no To five storied pagoda which is always closed to visitors because it’s essentially a graveyard. The 2 statues that are at the Hozomon gate were modeled after 1960 sumo wrestlers. To honor them, every few years 800 citizens of Maruyama get together and create a pair of enormous waraji straw sandals. Each sandal weighs about 2.5 tons each. The main temple just past this gate (Hondo or Kannon-do) is pretty spectacular. Some of the greatest artworks from Sensoji’s collection are painted directly on the ceiling or are hanging on the upper part of the walls. The room where the services take place is also open and you can watch, but usually you aren’t allowed inside. In our haste to get out of the heat and crowds we walked back the same way we came, only realizing later that we had missed seeing the garden and stone bridge to the left of the temple. Oh well. 
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Back at the station, we got on the train and headed for our fun part of the day. We made our way to Odaiba, which I like to call Tokyo’s playground. There are lots of fun things to do here. After eating lunch at a pizza place, we had fun playing at Joypolis which is a fun indoor amusement park. We went on a few of the rides, played a virtual reality game, and tried our hand at the claw games. I gave Andrew 1,000 yen (@$10) and let him have fun. I told him the claw games couldn’t be won but he was determined, telling me he knew how to win. I couldn’t believe it when he actually won his favorite Pokeman character. Then he tried to get snoopy and WON that too. What??? It was crazy. He was beyond excited. We left all smiles, bought a few things at the Daiso (Japanese version of the dollar store) and got on the train to go back to our hotel. Later that night we ate dinner at Moti’s (Indian Restaurant) which was only a 10 min walk from our hotel. We were in heaven as we ate the butter chicken and naan. I first tried Moti’s when I was a teenager. It is still as good today as it was all those years ago. It was the perfect way to end our day and our fabulous trip to Japan!!