A Sunday of Scaling: Tokyo Tower

After years of flitting back and forth, and always putting it off, I finally got the chance to visit Tokyo Tower. I love seeing it light up the sky on my walk to the station, looking like a vaguely geographically confused Eiffel Tower. It seems to placidly observe as taller buildings crop up around it, as if it were above it all.

Not surprisingly it is rather crowded, but you can avoid the worse of the lines by taking the stairs most of the way (it only takes 10 minutes, with stops for photos). The bright orange beams are quite striking. Dusk is definitely the best time to visit, so you can watch the sun set over the cityscape, and then enjoy the glittering, jewel-like appearance of Tokyo at night.

You can't beat the romance of standing on top of the world, and the thrill of being up so high.

While it is modest compared to the flashy Skytree, I definitely felt it was necessary to check out the sempai tower first,you know, to respect hierarchy. Also, the prices are a bit closer to decent (it is 3000 yen to get to the top of the Skytree... thats more than a week worth of food, eeek!)

After descending and sniggering over the vaguely indecent mascots (seriously? who thought them up?) we hopped over to Azabu Juban for dinner, and decided to check out Eat Your Greens, which has intrigued me for a while.

 While the availability of vegetarian food has increased dramatically in Japan, sometimes it just lacks 'omph'. And here we found it. We split an amazing autumnal veggie and couscous salad, bursting with nuts and other goodness. The falafel plate was quite good, with chewy falafel and lots of tahini. The vegan taco-rice was surprisingly spicy, and reminded me of my mother's awesome vegetarian chili. They also have a homemade gingerale with a good kick. Yum yum :)