The city that never sleeps. And no I'm not talking about the Big Apple, but it might as well be the New York of the Eastern world. One of Tokyo's largest appeal was the shopping, where anyone can find the most up to date fashion and technology released fresh off the shelves. Not to mention the appeal of many anime/manga enthusiasts around the world, including myself. Out of all the cities I visited in Japan, Tokyo was the busiest city where everyone on the streets moved like they had a purpose. Shopping centers dominated the streets, usually close to major subway stations like Shibuya and Shinjuku. It wasn't hard to turn around a corner and bump into a tall shopping complex that would make any shopping fanatic spend hours on each floor. And the best thing about the opening hours in Tokyo (and in most major cities) was the late night shopping, as many shops usually open around 10am and close up to 10pm. Best to wear your most comfortable shoes when shopping and sight seeing are planned for Tokyo.
Senso-ji Temple
Before harking on about the modern side of Tokyo, I would like to mention one of the most busiest tourist destination sites within the city - Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa. This temple complex is well known for displaying their huge red lantern at the front gate and main temple, alongside a strip of many food and souvenir stores. Also an easy get to destination via a subway ride to Asakusa station, where upon disembarking we entered a shopping arcade that led us to the temple.
This was one of the two giant rope-woven shoes situated at the front gates of Senso-ji.
As mentioned before in my previous post, these wells or Chozuyas provide visitors with fresh water to cleanse their hands and mouth.
Outside the temple, by donating 100Y we shook a tall hexagonal metal cylinder until a bamboo stick with a number written on it fell out of the hole on the top. The number corresponded to the fortune paper (O-mikuji) which indicated what sort of fortune had bestowed upon us. From memory I had a not-so-great fortune, in which case I had to fold it and tie the piece of paper onto a metal wire alongside other fortunes so that I didn't have to bring the bad luck with me.
A line of people proceeded up the temple to chuck a donation coin into the huge grated box before making a prayer.
In many ways these line of stores are a huge tourist magnet, selling all kinds of Japanese knick knacks from cute chibi key chains to traditional stylish kimonos.
Odaiba Island
Odaiba is a man-made island that is essentially a mini entertainment complex with plenty of attractions to visit. By stopping at Shimbashi station, we took the Yurikamome, a monorail that directly took us to Odaiba. Because we only had a short amount of time, the places we chose to visit were Diver City, Palette Town, Leisure Land, and Odaiba Beach to view the Rainbow Bridge.
Although we didn't do any shopping here, Diver City was a large shopping complex that contained many boutiques and high-end fashion stores, both local and international brands. It also has Round1, an entertainment sports facility where visitors pay one price to enjoy various fun activities like soccer, baseball, hoverboarding, karaoke, and unlimited arcade game play. Definitely a must try, and it was the best place to get away from all the shopping and sight seeing, to just relax and be a kid again.
On the
basement level was the food court, which had a tourist friendly section
that gave us a translated and pictorial menu of each restaurant.
Ordering was pretty simple. We just had to pick the dish we wanted, print the piece of paper that had our order, and hand it over to the cashier belonging to the restaurant.
As we left Diver City and made our way across the island, I had to stop to take some snaps of these tulip flowers. These bed of gorgeous flowers were planted all along outside the shopping center, very hard not to miss.
Similar to Round1, Tokyo Leisureland consisted of a large arcade floor and a place to practice one's baseball skills with an automatic shooting system. Depending on the game, most of the arcades costed around 100-300Y per game. Other activities included karaoke, bowling, darts, sport games, and interactive rooms such as a haunted house and an Alice in wonderland theme room.
At the front of the arcade area were rows of capsule toys. Capsule toys are quite unique in Japan and fun to collect. They range across from anime figurines, cute animal toys, badges, pins, to slightly weird but also adorable collectables like cats in sushi costumes and bread toasts with suspicious looking faces on them.
Another neat place to visit was Palette Town, which consisted of a concert hall, an auto mobile gallery, and Venus Fort, which was an arty European style shopping arena with a very nice fountain in the center.
Venus Fort was a lot less busier than Diver City, and gave off a nice sophisticated appeal with its European inspired design. Some of the stationary and clothing stores sold quite unique produces, albeit together with a hefty price tag. The Lego Store was also found here.
Just right beside Palette Town was a colorful Ferris wheel, called Daikanransha. It made for a fantastic photo once the lights were lit up.
Not so much lit up in its rainbow glory, the Rainbow Bridge connected Tokyo with Odaiba Island, and a great place to view it was at Odaiba Beach.
Tokyo Imperial Palace Grounds
The Palace Grounds were situated in the center of Tokyo, so it was easy to reach from Tokyo Station plus a 10-15 minute walk. Although we couldn't enter the actual palace without registering for a tour, exploring the area was still quite a walk thanks to the outrageously huge empty park area. We were able to go up to the closed gates that led into the inner palace grounds (well just a few meters away across the bridge), and took a nice picture of Nijubashi Bridge. The view of the bridge and palace tower in the distance also made for an attractive view for local painters.
Tokyo Tower
We got off at Onarimon station and literally hiked up a hill to reach the tower. It wasn't easily visible from the station at first amidst all the towering sky scrappers until we caught the glimpse of the iconic red spike. At the time we visited, the top deck was closed due to renovations so we just explored the ground levels where there was the Nepec souvenir store (and a restaurant for fans), a gallery and history of the tower, and a floor of Japanese souvenir stands. All free to access for those who don't want to pay to access the top deck.
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