Skytree - Mar 3

Once again we were on our own for the day, although Sean is coming to meet us for supper tonight.
We got started a little late as Dave got involved with his e-mails and then had to phone a client. We decided to find the little deer leather shop our rickshaw driver had pointed out to us. We recalled it being on Orange Street, not far off of the street our hotel is on. We were absolutely correct, but walked past it the first time so instead wandered around a little, finding the comedy street again, and the raccoon street, and a number of other spots our rickshaw driver had taken us. We finally decided to give up and go back to Starbucks for a coffee, coming across the store just before we reached Starbucks. It was the first store on Orange street, before we started looking for it. But we enjoyed our look around. The leather store has wonderful wallets, purses, etc. of really soft deer leather with lacquered designs. It is expensive, so I didn't buy any (yet).
After Starbucks we decided to take the free Skytree Shuttle. Unfortunately, we stood at the bus stop on the wrong side of the street. After we had seen two go by across the street, and none come our way, we crossed the street to catch it. It is a loop route, so only goes one way down the street. We got on, and it was the Skytree Shuttle, but wasn't free (220 yen each) and we had to sit through most of the route to get to the Skytree. By the time we arrived there we were starved for lunch, so went to the food fair and found an udon noodle place where we could pick up a bowl for lunch.
Then we stood in a long line to get tickets to go up the Skytree to the viewing deck. The photo is the view up the Skytree from level 5 of Skytree Town (the mall under it). Once again we wondered where the international tourists were, as everyone else in line was Japanese.
We went up and looked over Tokyo. We could spot our hotel, the Asahi beer buildings, the boat dock and the pagoda at the Asakusa temple grounds,  when we looked our direction. Looking out other directions we saw other rivers, in addition to the Sumida beside us, and the ocean, and smog in the distance. Most of the buildings seem to be about 3 or 4 stories, with a lot of 10 to 15 story buildings, and a few skyscrapers, most of them in distant clusters. After looking our fill every direction, we came down (ears popping all the way), caught the shuttle (this time we knew where) and came back to our hotel for a rest before supper with Sean.