Japan 2017: Day Ten - Out-and-about in Tokyo

The weather in Tokyo has been absolutely glorious, clear-blue skies, not a cloud to be seen. Even when we arrive here enroute to Osaka, the skies were clear. Today, was no different. Noting that Tokyo seems to wake late and close late, we are enjoying the opportunity to not set an alarm and get a sleep-in. So after a nice sleep-in, we headed out for Brunch (though closer to Lunch, than Breakfast) before going the Loop Line at Akihabara station and heading two stops west to Tokyo's main station.

Our apartment building

We have transited the main station maybe a half-dozen times by now, but this was the first time that we actually walked outside the station, and it was quite a surprise to see the beauty of this old station. Built in 1914, this is Japan's busiest train station in terms of number of trains per day that stop here. That number is in excess of a staggering 4000 trains per day and more than half-a-million passengers. It has survived a number of Eartquakes and was significantly damaged by US bombing in May 1945. But it lives on and is seen as a symbol of Japan.

We walked from the station to the gates of the Imperial Palace for a view of the East Gardens. Unfortunately, today was also the exact day that a particular section of the Imperial Palace East Gardens was opened to the public for the first time in a year-and-a-half to let people view its autumn leaves, which meant that there were literally tens of thousands of people lining for hours to walk through the gardens. After a team meeting, we decided to skirt the periphery of the Imperial Palace Grounds, which were supposedly just as spectacular. We may have another crack at the Palace Gardens mid-week.

After walking past the beautiful moats that surround the Palace precinct, we headed towards Yurakucho in search for a famous Godzilla statue. With Godzilla being synonymous with Tokyo, it seemed that no visit to Tokyo would be complete without visiting it. However, after not being able to find it, I decided to pull out the iPad and discovered this.

No problem, apparently there is one in Shinjuku.

We boarded the train at Yurakucho and headed to two stops down to Hamamatsucho Station. From there we walked to the Zojoji Buddhist Temple.

Zojoji Temple is the main Temple of the Chinzei branch of Jōdo-shū Buddhism. The main gate we walked through dated back to 1622. The grounds surrounding the main temple were massive with lots of smaller temple buildings, mausoleums and gardens.

One particularly sad area was a garden along the side with rows of little stone statues of children representing unborn children, including miscarried, aborted, and stillborn children, it was quite touching to see little crochet head coverings to keep their tiny heads warm. Very touching.

We then headed a short distance to Tokyo Tower, but were first greeted by a young children bicycle race. It looked like a full-blown BMX race, with the children donning padded clothing and full-face helmets, but the children were so young we realised that the bikes didn't even have pedals.

Thankfully we only saw one stack (crash). We then went up into the Tokyo Tower. Tokyo Tower was built in 1958 and is a communications and observation tower in the and is 332.9 metres tall making it the second-tallest structure in Japan. It is an Eiffel Tower-inspired lattice tower and is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations. Interestingly, it is painted every five years and takes a year to paint.

Unfortunately, due to renovations, the upper observation deck was closed as was the Northern facing aspect of the main observation deck. Also, whilst the sky throughout the day was clear blue, as we viewed towards the South, looking directly towards the sun, it appeared to be quite hazy.