The next morning, we headed out after breakfast to go to the Imperial Palace. We took the long way to the subway station to follow a well-manicured path along the Sumida River. Gorgeous day. Beautiful views of the Skytree tower that we would visit the following day. The city is so clean. There are no bins/garbage cans anywhere. People carry their rubbish until they can dispose of it properly. As a tourist, it's frustrating at times but it works.
The subway is also clean and efficient as one would expect. Within twenty minutes we were downtown. We walked through the city center to get to the gate of the palace grounds.
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Imperial Palace
The 1.15 square kilometer (0.44 sq mi) grounds and gardens are built on the site of the old Edo Castle (Edo being the former name of Tokyo). Some moats, walls and ramparts of the castle survive to this day, but it’s only a small part of the ancient grounds of the palace.
The earliest known structures on the site were supposedly built around 800. There were numerous iterations of royal developments on the land over the subsequent centuries with Edo Castle being built in 1457. Imperial leadership (Shogun) reigned up until 1868 when the shogunate was abolished and the emperor took up residence on the site. Modifications continued on the site throughout this period until World War II when many of the structures were damaged. Today, the main grounds of the actual functioning palace are generally closed to the public (except for reserved guided tours which we didn’t do). Given that the current palace is more of a modern structure, constructed post-WWII, it’s of less interest, at least for me.
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Ramen
After the palace grounds, we returned to our neighborhood for lunch. We were looking for a ramen place off the beaten path and, after considerable search, we very much found were looking for. We stumbled on a place that was basically a small kitchen with an L-shaped counter around it consisting of a total of eight stools. It’s not the kind of place that would (could) attract a lot of tourists. A Japanese game show was playing loudly on a TV mounted on the wall. The kind, oldish owner-cook-waiter did his best to communicate with us as we placed our order. It was pretty basic. You just pick your toppings and the kind of sauce you want with your noodles. I like my ramen spicy and I was hoping that my standard of spicy was at the level of this place. It ended up being great.
Our hotel had a rooftop area with a nice view. It had
chairs, small tables and even real grass. In front of us (south) was the Senso-ji
temple area. To our left (east) was the Skytree Tower that we would be visiting
the following day. To the southwest lay the central Tokyo business district.
Beyond that, on a very clear day, we would supposedly be able to see Mt. Fuji. It’s
apparently quite rare to see it from the hotel, but we were hopeful that we
might see it from the Skytree the next day.
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Donki
By early evening, we headed out to run some errands at a large department store called Don Quijoti (locals apparently call it “Donki”). It was probably the most insane shopping experience I’ve ever had. Four floors of discount variety store. Small talking screens everywhere. Noise. Lots of pink. Anime characters. Narrow maze-like aisles. Claustrophobic. It was sort of the way I would design hell.
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| Everyone needs magical deodorant |
On the upside, there was very little it didn’t have and it’s very popular with both tourists and locals – if that’s your thing.
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| Shark eating a kitten. Joyful days? |
After surviving Don Quijoti, we went in search of sushi. Though
we were fortunate enough to avoid significant issues with jet lag, by the end
of dinner we were ready to return to the hotel for an early night.
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