This is the end of our two weeks in Japan, and we’ll be moving on to China later today. Sad, really. We spent the last 4 nights in Tokyo, as whenever we’ve been to Japan in the past we’ve always felt that we haven’t spent enough time here. It’s a huge fascinating city, with lots of life, bustle, and strange things to explore. And fantastic food to enjoy!
And after Nikko, which (although a very beautiful place) has a town-wide closing time of about 3pm, it’s been nice to stay somewhere where you can get a bite to eat any time of the day or night. We spent most of the time here wandering between places. We’d find somewhere we wanted to see (like Shinjuku or Ginza) and walk to it from our hotel in Roppongi. This way we got to explore the town a lot better than just taking the tube – you keep on stumbling across things like beautiful Japanese gardens, temples, giant replicas of the Eiffel tower, monstrous fish in big tanks, and so on. Have a look at the photos below to see what I mean. As I said, strange place!
I think my favourite temple in Tokyo is still Senso Ji. We came here a few years back in the middle of a festival, and I’ve had the most amazing photo of it on my laptop as a desktop ever since! OK, I didn’t manage quite such a nice photo this time around, but even though there was no festival on the place still had a carnival atmosphere. Very lively, good natured, and the temple buildings themselves looked absolutely immaculate. In fact, while we were there they were cleaning the giant 5 story pagoda with a Cherry Picker crane.
Another good place to see was the bay. It’d almost difficult to think of Tokyo as a coastal town, as most of the famous regions are well away from the sea. But actually it’s worth taking the monorail out over the massive Rainbow Bridge into the island of reclaimed land in the middle of the bay simply for it’s randomness! This place seems to be a strip a mile or two long, filled with giant shopping arcades. Not just any malls though, that would be boring! The best one has a Venice theme, and is decked out with silly fountains, painted ceilings, and (as every Italian city has) a huge Toyota show centre with silly little electric cars driving themselves around at track that circles the main show area. We found it a fascinatingly tacky place to spend a few hours, but many young Japanese girls were out in force spending hideous amounts of money in the designer shops.
Of course other places where you can also dispose of your life savings by buying shoes and a matching handbag are the posh department stores of Ginza and Shinjuku. These are also great to wander around, but they also have cheaper normal areas to shop in, and fantastic basements full of delicatessen counters where you can pick up really tasty gyoza (Japanese fried dumplings). Roppongi, where we stayed, also has it’d designer sections (mainly around the Ritz and the huge mall Roppongi Hills), but it’s also has some really odd areas. Probably the most bizarre is the life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower – no, sorry, not quite a replica - the Tokyo version is 3m higher, and painted red and white for some reason. But I also liked the amusement arcade with the fish tank outside that was home to a small shark and a huge grey fish. Seriously, this fish probably weighed nearly as much as me!
Anyway, on to Beijing, where the writing is just as easy to understand as Japanese, and absolutely everyone speaks English! This next five weeks in China should be fascinating, but it’s unlikely to be easy…
And after Nikko, which (although a very beautiful place) has a town-wide closing time of about 3pm, it’s been nice to stay somewhere where you can get a bite to eat any time of the day or night. We spent most of the time here wandering between places. We’d find somewhere we wanted to see (like Shinjuku or Ginza) and walk to it from our hotel in Roppongi. This way we got to explore the town a lot better than just taking the tube – you keep on stumbling across things like beautiful Japanese gardens, temples, giant replicas of the Eiffel tower, monstrous fish in big tanks, and so on. Have a look at the photos below to see what I mean. As I said, strange place!
I think my favourite temple in Tokyo is still Senso Ji. We came here a few years back in the middle of a festival, and I’ve had the most amazing photo of it on my laptop as a desktop ever since! OK, I didn’t manage quite such a nice photo this time around, but even though there was no festival on the place still had a carnival atmosphere. Very lively, good natured, and the temple buildings themselves looked absolutely immaculate. In fact, while we were there they were cleaning the giant 5 story pagoda with a Cherry Picker crane.
Another good place to see was the bay. It’d almost difficult to think of Tokyo as a coastal town, as most of the famous regions are well away from the sea. But actually it’s worth taking the monorail out over the massive Rainbow Bridge into the island of reclaimed land in the middle of the bay simply for it’s randomness! This place seems to be a strip a mile or two long, filled with giant shopping arcades. Not just any malls though, that would be boring! The best one has a Venice theme, and is decked out with silly fountains, painted ceilings, and (as every Italian city has) a huge Toyota show centre with silly little electric cars driving themselves around at track that circles the main show area. We found it a fascinatingly tacky place to spend a few hours, but many young Japanese girls were out in force spending hideous amounts of money in the designer shops.
Of course other places where you can also dispose of your life savings by buying shoes and a matching handbag are the posh department stores of Ginza and Shinjuku. These are also great to wander around, but they also have cheaper normal areas to shop in, and fantastic basements full of delicatessen counters where you can pick up really tasty gyoza (Japanese fried dumplings). Roppongi, where we stayed, also has it’d designer sections (mainly around the Ritz and the huge mall Roppongi Hills), but it’s also has some really odd areas. Probably the most bizarre is the life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower – no, sorry, not quite a replica - the Tokyo version is 3m higher, and painted red and white for some reason. But I also liked the amusement arcade with the fish tank outside that was home to a small shark and a huge grey fish. Seriously, this fish probably weighed nearly as much as me!
Anyway, on to Beijing, where the writing is just as easy to understand as Japanese, and absolutely everyone speaks English! This next five weeks in China should be fascinating, but it’s unlikely to be easy…
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:-))
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