Last Dinner and Trip Favorites

On our last night in Tokyo we walked to a restaurant that has grills built into the tables and a staff of chefs cooking 'Benihana style' at a central bar. It turned out to be a great place for us to go through our tradition of everyone naming their favorite experiences from the trip. Just as we did on our last night in Africa, we also recorded individual answers to the question, "will you return and under what circumstances?"

Since we were concluding a trip in which we visited two countries, we conducted a 'favorites tournament' of sorts, first determining our Japan favorites, then comparing to the previously determined China favorites to get a 'best of' list for the whole trip. Our goal was to get down to the 3-5 best, but that proved too difficult, which I think is a good sign. After much debate, here is the top 10 list, roughly in order of collective preference:

1. Hike to Tsumago, Japan and night at the Ryokan Fujioto (unanimous favorite).

2. The Great Wall of China (unanimous second).

3. The Nijo Castle in Kyoto, Japan.

4. The Forbidden City, Beijing.

5. The Shanghai Acrobat Show.

6. The park in Nara, Japan (Great Buddha Temple and Shrines).

7. The Summer Palace in Shanghai.

8. The Jade Buddha Temple, Shanghai.

9. Zen Rock Garden, Kyoto.

10. Yu Yuan Garden in Shanghai.

Other honorable mentions from Japan that didn't make the combined top ten: Karaoke in Tokyo; The Golden Palace in Kyoto; and the hall in Kyoto with the 1,001 Kannon statues.