Exploring San Francisco on Foot

After a crazy fast trip to Utah so I could train the new interns, Isa and I decided to do an even faster trip to San Francisco. We arrived late Friday night after a very frustrating delay from Delta (who claimed it was too hot to take off from SLC because it was over 90 degrees). We finally arrived at our AirBnb in Walnut Creek a little after midnight and went straight to bed.

We slept in a little because Utah was exhausting and then we jumped on Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to head into the City. We didn't really have a plan, so there was a lot of wandering and just finding things as we went. By the end of the day, we had covered 10.84 miles!

We took Bart to the Civic Center stop, which looked cool on the map - almost like Lincoln Center with its theatres, opera and ballet centers, and the library. Even City Hall was there and looked majestic:

But it's tarnished by the hundreds (seriously, hundreds) of homeless people sleeping everywhere and the unmistakable stench of pee. It was awful.

Yoyogi Park

Today we went to Yoyogi park. We went to check out the Myoji shrine and then walked around for a little bit. The shrine is pretty cool although not very photogenic.

It was crazy packed, the most busy we've seen any place in Tokyo outside of Shibuya crossing. It was fun to see lots of traditional weddings taking place. They got the system down just like Salt Lake Temple. One after another, just like clockwork, parading through the grounds.

It was also fun to see lots of people in traditional dress. We couldn't tell if it was because it was Sunday or because it was the shrine, or some other reason, but we were happy either way.

But even cuter we saw lots of kids in traditional attire. We think maybe it was like a communion or something because they all came out of the same time.

After the shrine, we walked through the park to find a nice place to hang out and watch another session of conference. We found out that on the side of the world, conference weekend is actually the weekend after the United States conference weekend since the time difference is so different. We were a little bummed since we could've gone to church last weekend, but it was fun to watch conference in a park this time instead of at home. Isa found a podcast where we could download an MP3 version of the conference.

Yasukuni and the Palace Gardens

We were excited to explore Yasukuni because one of our Tokyo apps uses the temple there as its cover shot.

We found a few cool places on the grounds, including a small stage, a sumo ring, and a tea garden.

That's when we decided we need to have a Japanese garden in our yard (well, we need a yard first, but when we get that, we'll put one of these in it).

After we left the garden, we saw a girl dressed in full traditional attire. I fully embraced my touristy self and asked for a picture.

Then we walked over to the Palace. You can't go into the palace because the emperor lives there. It's kinda like Buckingham Palace that way. But there are gardens all around it open to the public. We were really excited to explore the gardens, but when we got there, we found out that they're more parks than gardens.

But here are a few of the highlights: