On to Shanghai and Tokyo

Well...as you can from yesterday's post, I've been hacked. The management takes no responsiblity for any and all comments from PL. (ok...it's just Phil adding his two cents.)

Back to our Asia tour while I comment on Phil's pictures without really knowing where and what they are (at least until we arrive in Tokyo).

Here we see a lovely night shot of Shanghai. I looked for the day pictures, but alas there are none. Something about a pesky thing called work that kept him busy during the day.

Look...Pizza Hut and 7 Eleven in Shanghai!

And now...on to Tokyo. I flew out from the States on June 26th to meet Phil in Tokyo. And let me just say...after a short flight to Chicago and 4 hour layover, a flight a little over 9 hours to Tokyo is much better than the 15 or 16 hour flight from the west coast to Sydney. Who knew that I'd ever be saying that a 9 hour flight was nothing!

Phil picked me up at the airport, got us train tickets and we were on our way into Tokyo. (the airport is an hour from the city.) And if it wasn't for him meeting me...perhaps I would still be at the ticket maching trying to figure out how much yen to put in the machine and trying to figure out by looking at the map exactly which train I needed. No clue!

We pulled in to Tokyo, left the station and walked next door to the Imperial Palace to take a look around the grounds. So here's my only touch of real culture from the trip...a guard tower near the moat that surrounds the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

After a dinner of pizza for me and a cheeseburger for Phil, (who would've known that the pizza in Japan is much better than the pizza in Australia?) we got to our hotel...the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay. Check out the road directions on the street.

The hotel was very nice. I enjoyed English breakfasts at the restaurants in the morning- scrambled eggs, bacon (the American kind, not Australian bacon which is wide and chewy like Canadian bacon), croissants, fruit, and hot tea. But I'd have to say the neatest part of the hotel was their toilet seats. Yeah...their toliet seats.

They're heated!! Forget the bidet or shower button...I mean really, isn't paper truly enough? But a nice heated seat first thing in the morning? Lovely. Tomorrow...on to our first stop, Tokyo Disneyland.