I woke up this morning at 2:15am, which was not ideal. I laid in bed for about an hour trying to fall back asleep, but it wasn’t happening, so I decided to watch the Patriots game. I pulled it up on my phone, skipped through all the commercials, and watched the Pats beat the Saints.

After the game finished, I grabbed my laptop and went downstairs to work on the blog until Vivi woke up.

We checked out of our “closet” hotel at 9:15am and took an Uber to the Tokyo Edition, Toranomon. This hotel is stunning! Our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we decided to get breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was excellent, and the view was incredible.

After breakfast, we left the hotel and took a long walk (45 minutes) to the Imperial Palace. You can’t enter the palace walls since the Japanese royal family lives there, but even from the outside, the size of the estate is unbelievable. It’s massive. We walked around the gardens, saw the changing of the guard, and then headed over to Ginza to check out the shopping district.

By this point we were all pretty hungry, so we started looking for a lunch spot and found out that the Muji store actually has a diner. We decided to give it a try. The food wasn’t the best we’ve had in Japan so far, but it felt good to sit down and rest our feet for a while.

After lunch, it was time for a bit of shopping. The girls went one way and Bart and I went another. We ended up at the Uniqlo flagship store, one of Japan’s most popular clothing brands. I picked up a few things, including a shirt they made as a collaboration with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The prices were super cheap, but I’ve been told the quality is actually good, so I guess time will tell.

We all met back up around 3:30pm and jumped on our first bus across town. We arrived at our stop for teamLab Planets Tokyo at 4:15pm, just in time for our 4:30pm entry.

teamLab Planets is a very interactive art museum divided into four areas: Water, Garden, Forest, and Outdoor. It’s an amazing experience, and if you had kids with you, you could easily spend the whole day there. For us, after all the walking we’d already done, two hours was plenty. We made it through all the exhibits, loved the experience, and then decided it was time to head out.

We caught an Uber back to the Edition since none of us had the energy to deal with trains or buses. Bart and I went down to Family Mart, one of the convenience store chains here, and grabbed some food and snacks while the girls got ready to go to the pool. We all met there a little later and spent about an hour relaxing in the pool and jacuzzi.

At one point Vivi noticed I was falling asleep in the jacuzzi, which was a clear sign it was time to call it a night. We headed up to the room, ate our food, and were asleep by 10pm. The combination of jet lag and all the walking really caught up with us today, but it was a phenomenal day in Tokyo!