Woke up this morning at 7:45 am as the Grand Tokyo Tour was to begin at 8:45 am. So from this point of view, not much better than getting up at 6:45 am for work! Still, it wasn't too much of a struggle to get up, get ready and grab a bite to eat. So anyway onto the tour...
The tour for the day consisted of two parts - a morning segment and an afternoon segment, sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, the distinction isn't due to the fact that each part occurs in different parts of the day - it's because each part had a different guide.
The first stop for the tour was Tokyo Tower. Tokyo Tower is a copy of Paris' Eiffel Tower, and as the Japanese would say - much better. Haha. When compared to the Eiffel Tower the Tokyo Tower is taller and lighter. Furthermore, the Tokyo Tower actually serves a purpose other than being a tourist point. Tokyo Tower is the main television transmission tower for the city. Quite the tower.
Tokyo Tower has two observation decks and milling about the first observation deck was part of the tour itself. Quite a good starting point for the tour, actually. Not only were we treated with a panoramic view of Tokyo, the guide also managed to point out several highlights of Tokyo - such as the entertainment/shopping districts of Shinjuku and Roppongi Hills.
After the Tokyo Tower we headed off to the Meiji Shinto Shrine. This was quite a sight! This was impressive for me as I wasn't expecting to see too many green areas in Toyko (besides the Imperial Palace). Words can not convey the majesty and beauty of the place. Briefly, there were native japanese trees lining a gravel walkway whilst an extremely light mist hovered all around. Serenity... how's the serenity.
Our time at the Meiji Shinto shrine was a great cultural experience. |We managed to pick up on a couple of customs - purifying the body before entering the shrine and making wishes, to name a few. What was most interesting however was that we managed to catch a glimpse of a Shinto wedding. Shinto weddings are quite different in the sense that only immediate family seems to be present - quite unlike the Western/Christian weddings where friends and colleagues are invited to both the ceremony and the reception.
The last stop before lunch was a trip to the Imperial East Gardens, which is open to the public. A nice garden (read park) to walk through although it wasn't as inspiring as the Meiji Shinto Shrine. All we really got to see was the garden proper and that's about it, the imperial palace proper is closed to the public for all but two days in the year. February 12 isn't one of those days.
Skip forward to lunch - lunch wasn't the best but you can't really expect much from a guided tour in a food sense. We ate in a restaurant in the fashion/shopping district of Ginza - what we ate was a lunch box, pretty much. More later.
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