DAY 3: I THINK WE BROKE OUR LEGS ON THE FIRST DAY OUT

erik and i are both pretty sure we walked at LEAST 10 miles today.

but, before we get into that, lets start out with our super awesome hotel in shinjuku that we love :) here are some pictures of areas outside our room:

the outside of the building

the lobby area

and the area right when you walk out of the elevators on our floor :) everything looks so nice!

we ended up passing out at like 9pm last night, so we of course woke up at 4am this morning. we went over to the 7-11 right behind our hotel and picked up some breakfast

that fruit cup in the middle looked so perfect, it looked fake haha

and we made some koohii (coffee) with this cool water heater that came with our room :)

this is for you, jenn. haha

afterwards, we headed out to shibuya (that giant famous intersection with the huge crosswalks you always see in any movie that takes place in japan). it was raining, and FREEZING, but we wanted to walk there because it was only about a 45 minute walk away, and we could see stuff on the way, as well as save some money by avoiding the trains. turns out, we got to walk through the meiji jingu garden! we were planning on going there sunday haha...here are some pictures:

the torii gate at the beginning

japan also has a lot of really cute things that we dont have. like really fun looking buses:

and manholes that look WAY better than ours haha

so pretty!

we kept walking, and i just took some interesting shots a long the way

some cool moss that was growing on a ton of the trees a long the street

again, vending machines everywhere

and i LOVE how they have adorable little gardens anywhere they can fit them in the city. tokyo is so green for being such a huge city.

finally we get to shibuya, and it was pretty cool to watch everyone pass through the intersection a few times. we got some starbucks and sat by the window on the 2nd floor to get a better arial view

by the way, EVERYONE in japan has an umbrella. everyone. even when it's misting, they whip out the umbrellas. and there are umbrella accommodations (bags for them for when you go inside/holders to have them sit while you dine, etc) at EVERY store or cafe. it's pretty cool!!!

back down on the ground staring at the giant Q-front screen :)

we walked around for a while and then we decided to try out shibuya 109: the shopping mecca for all japanese teenage girls

i really wish we were allowed to take pictures or video inside because it was so chaotic, but it was prohibited. basically, take about 100+ clothing/shoe/jewelry stores, 8 floors,  and 7892749021347478921740 japanese girls, and you have shibuya 109. it was pretty intense, but certainly an experience haha...

we still had more to explore for this day, so we decided to head back. here are some pictures i took on our way back:

going back through the amazingly beautiful meiji jingu garden again

the cherry blossoms starting to blooooom!

lots of cool alleys

and trains to wait for

once we got back to the hotel, we realized we were STARVING, so we headed out into shinjuku to find some food. we stumbled upon this random place that looked yummy, and met a cool guy named alex! he was also american, so we talked for a long time about all the differences there are in japan. he moved to japan last september, and he was super knowledgeable. after lunch, he showed us around shinjuku for a while! we first headed to the top of the tokyo metropolitan building for a fantastic view (although, since it was raining, we will try again on another day to get better shots). it was free to go up, so that was awesome!

then he showed us a bunch of really cool shops in shinjuku and we had a really great time :) we were going to go out with him for drinks with his other friends, but by 7:00pm, we were just SO exhausted. waking up at 4am, and then all that walking was just killer, so we just headed back to the hotel, but alex really helped make our stay in shinjuku so cool! he gave us a lot of really good advice too :) here are some pics i took while walking back to our hotel. shinjuku at night is pretty cool!

well, it's 9:25pm right now, and i bet it's going to be another early night. it's so exhausting walking around all day! our feet and knees are killing us haha...hopefully we'll be good to go for tomorrow!