It’s a little past 1 PM on our first full day in Tokyo, we’re back in our super-luxurious hotel room suite at the Four Season Marunouchi, and my friend Lori is leading her husband Nick and me through a series of yoga stretches. We’re lined up along the room’s hallway wall, ankles above our heads, stretching out stiff backs and legs after a morning of tramping around the Imperial Palace Gardens, Meiji Shrine, and Harajuku.

We had a smooth and uneventful (but LONG) flight over from San Francisco yesterday. The plane was brand-spanking-new, and had a lot of legroom in the economy-class seats.

After landing at Narita, we staggered wearily through passport control, customs, then downstairs to the train station in the airport’s basement, where we traded in our JR Rail Pass vouchers for the actual rail passes.

Then we hopped aboard the Narita Express, and rode for an hour towards downtown Tokyo. At first, it was a dark landscape of fields and only occasional houses, but the closer we came to the city, the more frequent the malls and houses, which quickly turned to high-rises and neon signs.

Tokyo Station, like most JR stations, is a huge underground maze of seemingly endless corridors, lined with shops and restaurants. After disembarking from the train, we wandered like lost souls for a while, trying to find the correct exit to get to the hotel. Though only 6:45 PM Tokyo time, it was nearing 2 AM California time by then, and Lori had utterly wilted at that point.

Only half-awake, she obediently stumbled along in our wake as we went through passages, up stairs, down stairs, past ticket vending machines, and through “Kitchen Street” a tunnel lined with little cafes, sushi bars, noodle shops, and bakeries—until we took a wrong turn. Then she roused long enough to issue a set of tartly-worded directives. Once satisfied that we were back on track, she relapsed back into her stupor.

The hotel proved to be two buildings down from the train station exit, once we found the correct exit. We were warmly greeted by the staff, our luggage taken, and our room keys issued in short order.

Our room is huge, nearly the size of my condo, with an oversized bathroom in glass and slate, interior maple-paneled walls, and wrap-around floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the Ginza District from the sixth floor of the high-rise.

Nick and I ventured out again to pick up a snack—an obento box with an odd assortment of foods—deep-fried chicken nuggets, Japanese rice, pickled seaweed salad, pickled ginger…and a scoop of potato salad and spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Hot showers and we all fell into our fabulously comfortable beds. It was only 9pm Tokyo time, but we were exhausted.

So of course, we were all awake at 4:30am. I managed to fall back asleep, though and woke up again around 7am. Lori and Nick had been out exploring the hotel and returned bearing coffee and the sad news that the French patisserie down the street didn’t open until 10am.

It was a glorious morning—sunny, blue skies. We set forth, ducking into a café located in the train station to purchase breakfast pastries and lattes. The choices were definitely interesting: in addition to the usual croissants, there were curry doughnuts, rolls topped with over-easy eggs, ham, sweet corn, and broccoli, and sausage-and-egg rolls. We picked up a selection of items, then walked three or four blocks through the wide deserted streets to the gardens surrounding the Imperial Palace.

After having our breakfast while sitting on benches overlooking an interesting set of pools and fountains, we walked around the Imperial Palace’s moat (the closest you can actually get to the palace). After a brief but spirited debate about where to go next, we reached a consensus, then purchased a day pass for the Metro, hopped on the subway, and rode over to the Meiji Shrine.

When we exited the station, and entered the forested park, walking up the wide gravel paths leading to the shrine, we noticed lots of people wearing traditional kimono, including a number of young children.

Reaching the shrine, we paused at the granite basin of the purification fountain to rinse off our hands and mouths with cool water poured from bamboo dippers, then continued on into the shrine’s precincts.

Almost immediately, we saw the reason for all of the traditionally-dressed people—Sunday mornings are apparently prime time for Shinto wedding ceremonies at the shrine. We saw several couples in full traditional wedding regalia posing for photos, and a wedding procession led by a Shinto priest in full Heian-era vestments, followed by miko (shrine maidens) in traditional scarlet trousers and white blouses, then the bride and groom, and the wedding party in a variety of gorgeous kimono.

The main courtyard of the shrine was also hosting ceremonies for the young children we’d seen earlier, all of whom were adorably dressed up and excited about the fact. I remember reading that there are Shinto ceremonies to celebrate when children reach certain ages, and it appeared that the proud parents and grandparents were bringing their kids to the shrine to receive a blessing from the priests.

We hung around for a while, taking lots of photos, then wandered back to the station, and from there, down Harajuku’s tree-lined avenues crowded with fascinating mixture of the older generation, dressed in their Sunday kimono best, hipsters, punk-rockers with elaborately dyed and styled hair, and more conservatively dressed urbanites. At this point, we were getting hungry, and wandered off into side-streets, looking for an inexpensive but interesting restaurant. After looking at rejecting a number of fast food, waffle, crepes, and rice-and-omelette places, we found a quirky American-style diner located on an outdoor patio, with an old Airstream trailer that had been converted to a kitchenette. We ordered burgers—Lori and I had a maple-glazed grilled chicken burger served with a tiny cup of horseradish-spiced mashed potatoes, and Nick had a regular hamburger served with a beer—and ate picnic-style on the patio as clouds began to roll in and our sunny weather disappeared in a gray humidity threatening rain.

Pleasantly tired, we made our way back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon cup of afternoon tea and a rest (and Lori’s yoga stretches).

Now, I’m typing up my journal (though I shudder at the hotel’s extortionate Internet access fee and will search out the rumored free wireless hotspots at local cafes), while Nick and Pirri sprawl on their bed and look through their Tokyo guides, and try to figure what (if anything) our jet-lagged selves are up to attempting this afternoon and evening.

(Later) We heard that the main streets of the nearby Ginza district are closed to traffic on Sundays, so we walked over, and joined a vast parade of people walking down the main boulevard of this shopping district. The temperatures remained mild and humid as we completed a circuit of the district. As always, the people-watching was excellent—the streets were crowded with young and old, the fashionable and the fashion victims, and assorted tourists like us.

As the afternoon lengthened toward evening, we braved a miles-long protest of what looked like nurses and other medical workers, who marched down one of the streets parallel to the train station, accompanied by cars with mounted megaphones that blared out protest slogans (and apologies to the pedestrians for blocking their way). Policemen directed traffic at all the major intersections, permitting the protestors to march at intervals after allowing cross-traffic through. It was one of the largest protests I’ve ever seen—the parade was at least a mile or two long—but it was all amazingly orderly and polite.

We searched in vain for an izakaya (Japanese pub with food) mentioned in our travel books, but alas, it appeared to be closed on Sundays. So, we ended up having a delicious supper at a tiny restaurant near the next train station down the road. I had the ginger pork dinner set, which consisted of miso soup, a generous bowl of rice, a tiny dish of pickled cabbage, another dish of seaweed salad in a sesame paste sauce, and a main plate of tender, paper-thin slices of delicious pork sautéed in ginger sauce, served with a salad of finely-shredded raw cabbage dressed with a lemon vinaigrette.

Now, it’s 7pm, and we’ve just finished dessert at a little café around the corner. They advertised a wireless hotspot, but alas, it was a browse-for-pay site, so I ended up at the Four Seasons’ business center, which has a computer and is free to guests.

We’ll all be going to sleep shortly, since we’re planning to visit the famous fish market tomorrow, and that means a very early start. No problem—we’re all going to be awake at 4:30 AM, anyway, with our jet lag. *g*