Godzilla Attacks

Friday, April 3, 2026

Yes, we started today at McDonald’s. I had a regular egg and muffin and Keith had a Japanese teriyaki sausage, egg, lettuce, mayonnaise muffin. We had the side package of strawberry cream cheese pie, hash browns, and orange juice. Keith thought the hash browns tasted Japanese.

We met Kristine and Mike at Starbucks. They were embarrassed until we confessed our McDonald’s. 🙂

We went to the Shinjuku Gardens where they have 11 different kinds of cherry trees and 700 of those trees. It is amazing to be here during the cherries. I don’t know what is more fun: just seeing all the beautiful blossoms or seeing how excited everyone is to be out among them.

We had lunch at a Japanese barbecue. This time instead of a bowl full of boiling soup we got a little grill. We had to order everything this time, so we didn’t have as many vegetables which was disappointing. We ordered little tiny bits of steak and Kristine had shrimp. It was delicious!.

While we were looking for lunch, I took a bunch more pictures of gross things that I didn’t want to eat. I could not even come up with this many gross parts of a chicken if you asked me to.

After lunch Kristine wanted to find the food truck with “long fries”. We didn’t find the exact one, but we did find some. They are mashed potatoes that are extruded into the cooking oil. I thought they tasted like fish and hated them. Mike was kind enough to say he could taste what I was tasting and pretend that I wasn’t crazy. He is so nice.

We ran into Godzilla! It was very exciting.

Then then we ran into the Godzilla store.

Just seeing all the stores on the streets with all the signs and all the people and all the all the all the all the all is fun.

KitKat shopping is complicated. There is not very much English around Tokyo like the other towns. We are thankful for phone translators.

We went to the Isetan department store. It was very high-end. They had a gazillion billion employees. We really felt like you should not touch anything. I saw a skirt I liked. It was $600. So, no. Keith was quite taken with a sailing lantern that was only $4,000. I saw a couple little signs around things that said no pictures, but it wasn’t until we were leaving that I saw the sign right inside the door that said no pictures – as in don’t take pictures at all in this store. So, these are illegal pictures.

Mike found a hidden gem that there was a free observation deck on the 45th floor of a big building. It took us a little while to find it, and it took us quite a while to wait in line for the elevator up to the top. Almost exactly 50 minutes after we got in line, we were up on top. We got our first glimpse of Mount Fuji in the distance before the sunset. That was nice.

When we came down from being high up, it was time for a projection show on the building. That was a fun surprise.

Extra pictures from today