On our third day in Tokyo we attend the Shinjuku Eisa Matsuri Festival, walk around the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, walk through Shibuya Crossing, and see the Sumida River Fireworks.

I woke up around 8AM today, so I got a lot of sleep. I was still laying in bed at 9:15AM, and everyone else is pretty tired as well. We have two festivals to go to today so we are taking it easy this morning. We left around noon to go towards the Shinjuku festival. We hung around there for an hour or so watching the drum and dance performances. It was possibly the hottest day of the trip, and incredibly humid, so we only lasted so long in the crowds.

To cool off we headed to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. I bought a lemonade for 350 yen and we got in for 200 yen. We walked around for an hour or so, before heading to Shibuya Crossing, one of the busiest intersections in the world. We stopped in the Starbucks that has a view of the crossing from above so we could take some video. There’s a timelapse in the video I linked at the beginning of this post.

In the afternoon some rain set in so we went to find some food. I didn’t realize how long it’d been since I’d last eaten so I was getting a little out of it and rather hangry. We found a nice place though and the noodles and shrimp hit the spot.

Newly energized, we walked to the Sumida River Fireworks Festival. Sort of. We walked down a street next to the park the fireworks were at because there were so many people. There was zero standing room, and the police were making sure nobody stood in the street so we had to keep walking. It also was raining on us. When we left we had to walk past one subway station because there was a mob of people trying to get into it.

We went to Ropongi Hills for dinner. Turns out it’s a really expensive area so we went to a German place. I got a beer and pesto German noodles with smoked salmon. We headed home around 11PM.

On day four of the trip I meet up with my cousin and we check out Tokyo SkyTree.