Tokyo Tour

For my first full day in Tokyo, I decided to go on a guided tour of the city. Of course I wouldn’t be hitting all of the spots in the city, but I thought it’d be a good idea to get a general view. It was a guided bus tour, so there was a bit of info about all of the spots we visited thrown in which was nice.

Picked up from the hotel, I was bused over to the bus station at Hamamatsucho, where the first half of the eightish hour tour would begin. We started things off in the World Trade Center on the 40th floor observatory which offered a nice view of the city. Was a little unlucky with the weather, but you could still see a good distance even with some clouds hanging around.

From here we hopped on the bus in transit to the next stop. On the bus, I sat with a few Perfume fans which was kinda interesting. They had asked how long I was there and what not and I made mention that I had been to a Hello! Project concert, of which they were not immediately familiar. When I mentioned Morning Musume however, it clicked. Anyway, the one guy was there for college which had just ended and so he was then with his friends visiting before leaving. So, they were kind of a hyper, younger bunch of people… yeah.

The next stop was to a 40 minute boat ride (ferry, or whatever) through the Sumida River. Was pretty cool cursing through Tokyo, though it was kinda hard to take pictures. The end point of the ride was in Asakusa, where we would visit the Kannon Temple, which is apparently the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Leading to the temple was the Nakamise Shopping Arcade, a road full of shopping for Japanese goods and food. I didn’t buy anything there, but there sure was a lot to look at.

At the main gate and inside the Kannon Temple itself, there were some pretty cool Raijin and Fuujin statues and the overall architecture of the buildings was cool. The whole experience of the temple was nice, from the holy water, the billowing smoke, the fortune/luck things, to the inside with the offering box, statues and other cool stuff.

This first half of this tour ended with a trip through Ginza and a stop at the Imperial Palace. Ginza is a place where they used to manufacture money, now they say it’s a place where they take money. A lot of big, expensive shops and brands, a nice place to go window shopping, but that’s about it with most’ budgets. While touring through Ginza, the guide talked a lot about the hard economic times.

The Imperial Palace is where the royal family lives. It’s a huge plot of land surrounded by a moat. The buildings on the inside are fairly low, so it’s not like a castle or anything. Which makes sense from both a defense and practicality standpoint. It had started to rain at this point, but we got some good views still.

On to the second half of the tour, we first headed out through Ginza over the Rainbow Bridge and on to Odaiba, the man made island in “new” Tokyo. We had dinner atop some… building, I forget the name, haha. It offered a good view as a lof of these tall buildings do and the food, a variety of sashimi, was good.

From there, we headed to the park where the giant Gundam was on display. Even at night, this thing was really impressive; so large, and detailed. This was a temporary display, so I’m glad I was able to see it.

The night ended in Roppongi Hills, with a high view of the city at night. Roppongi is one of the newer developed areas of Tokyo, and you could tell. The place was a little busy for a Tuesday, I can see that this is an active place. That said, I’ve not heard all that much good about Roppongi, that I’d be interested in anyway, so it would be my only stop in the Hills.

On the way home, it had started raining pretty hard but I got dropped off right at the hotel so it was alright. ‘Twas a good first day.

Photos are up on Facebook.