Thursday was a day for sight-seeing in Tokyo. Apart from temples and shrines, there’s actually not that many touristy things to do in Tokyo – hence we’d been spending most of our time exploring different areas and shopping.

We decided to go to the Tokyo Skytree. With a viewing platform at 350 metres high, it offers an unrivalled view of the city. (Although the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building has a similar view and is free).

We arrived at about 12.30, and got a ticket to come back for the 1.30 queue. So we checked out the shops. And saw some straaaaaange things. Like these crisps.

Also, in Japan, most restaurants offer plastic replicas of their food outside the restaurant so you can see at a glance what they offer. I visited the street where they sell them on my last trip to Tokyo, and they’re expensive – you’re talking at least £100 for a decent one. They did have a shop at the Skytree which sold them though, which is where I saw this beauty:

Amazing!

We grabbed a McDonald’s for lunch, and then headed back to join the queue.

And then we queued, and queued, and queued…. for an hour, with the queue moving very little. Then quickly all of a sudden. Then we bought our tickets and entered a queue for the lift…. which thankfully did move quite quickly.

There’s no doubt the views were amazing, but I guess because we didn’t know the city that well, and there aren’t that many stand-out landmarks, it was hard to tell what was what, and it was just a very high up view of the city. Still good to do though! And they had a bit you could walk on with a glass floor…

By the time we’d done all the queuing (there were queues to get back down again as well), it was close to 4.30pm, so we headed across town to Asakusa to visit a temple, as Ailse hadn’t seen one. Unfortunately when we got there it was closed. But she got to check her fortune (like I’d done before with disastrous results).

Then it was back to the pool for a swim and couple of drinks in the hotel’s famous New York Bar – on the 51st floor. I had a couple of glasses of Francis Ford Coppola’s Sophia Rose in honour of her Lost in Translation.

The bar was lovely, and yet again offered incredible views, but it was a bit rude (so I thought) to get charged a 2000 yen cover charge (about £13) when we were staying in the hotel!

We also spotted two people asleep – can you spot them in the photo below? Actually I’ll circle it to make it easier…

They were woken twice by a bar man.

So after a couple of glasses of wine, it was time for bed.