Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific B777-300ER Business Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific Lounge Review: The Cabin at HKG
Asian Adventure: Cathay Dragon A330-300 Business Class Hong Kong to Beijing
Asian Adventure: Regent Beijing Hotel
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Dongcheng District
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Great Wall
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Run-ze Jade Garden
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Legend of Kung Fu
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Tiananmen Square
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Forbidden City
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Hutong Tour via Rickshaw, Tea Tasting, Flying to Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Hotel Shangri-La Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Qing Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Tang Dynasty Dinner and Show
Asian Adventure: Xi’an Wrap-Up, Flying to Lhasa, Lhasa Home Visit
Asian Adventure: Shangri-La Hotel Lhasa
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Market
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Canggu Nunnery and Sera Monastery
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Potala Palace
Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing
Asian Adventure: Viking Emerald
Asian Adventure: Shibaozhai Temple
Asian Adventure: Cruising the Three Gorges
Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam
Asian Adventure: Jingzhou City Walls Tour
Asian Adventure: Wuhan - Hubei Bells Performance and Provincial Museum
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum
Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Old Shanghai and Yuyan Gardens
Asian Adventure: The New Otani Tokyo Hotel
Asian Adventure: Tokyo - City Tour
Asian Adventure: Mt. Fuji and Hakone Tour Returning by Shinkansen
Asian Adventure: ANA Suites Lounge Review, Tokyo Narita
Asian Adventure: All Nippon Airways B777-300ER First Class Tokyo Narita to Houston
When C and I went on the Danube Cruise last year, we looked at the official Viking pre-trip package in Prague and thought we could do as well on our own. That turned out to be true except that the package did include a direct transfer from Prague to the cruise's starting point of Nuremberg. But C speaks a bit of German and English is quite common there so we weren't concerned about getting around. We were not as confident we'd be able to get around in Tokyo so we booked the official extension. To me, the whole extension was a bit of a disappointment in a couple of ways. Our first day's city tour was a bit more free-form than the ones on the main tour and the second day's tour was farmed out to a third party. I will really think twice before booking another Viking extension.
Our primary guide for our two days in Tokyo was the same lady who met us at the airport (and who wasn't wearing red). She was super-nice but since she did not work directly for Viking she wasn't provided with the microphone and we didn't have headsets. While we had a fairly small group of 35 or so, it still made hearing her more difficult, especially in crowded areas.
Sensō-ji
An ancient Buddhist temple, Sensō-ji, was our first stop of the day and it was not far from the hotel. There are actually a number of buildings on the temple grounds and the Nakamise shopping street leads up to the temple grounds. Here's where the lack of a proper tour hurt us: we didn't really have any idea why this area was important or exactly which buildings we should be paying attention to. So the info below all comes from online research.
A sacred statue was pulled from the river in this area in in 645 AD the first temple was built. This is the oldest temple in Tokyo.
 |
Sensō-ji Temple |
There are several gates guarding its entrance like this one, the Kaminari (Thunder) Gate.
 |
| Kaminari (Thunder) Gate |
Then there's the middle gate called the Nitenmon Gate.
 |
| Nitenmon Gate |
And there's a five-story pagoda.
 |
| Buddhist temple with a 5-story pagoda |
The Nakamise (nahk-ah-mee-zee) Shopping Street is an area between the gates and there are dozens of open-air shops selling all kinds of things and there were buildings off to the side like a shopping arcade with yet more stores. If these shops were open in the winter I would imagine it could get quite chilly, especially if they get one of their rare snows like they did this past winter. I was glad to be able to add an official Tokyo 2020 Olympics t-shirt to my Olympic gear collection.
Our free time over, we got back on the bus to head to our next stop.
Kusunoki Masashige Statue
We drove to a park near the Imperial Palace. Near our parking lot was this large statue of Kusunoki Masashige. A 14th-century samurai, he's considered the epitome of samurai loyalty and was a sort of patron saint to the Kamikazes in World War II. They saw themselves as following in his footsteps by sacrificing their lives for the Emperor. Masashige had fought the Kamakura shogunate during the Genko War to try to return the rulership of Japan to the Emperor. Though he died in 1336 he received the highest honor from the Japanese government in 1880.
 |
| Kusunoki Masashige |
Imperial Palace
The little bits and pieces of the Imperial Palace that we could see looked nice but, well, there wasn't all that much to see. The palace sits in a park of about 280 acres and naturally we couldn't get very close to it. This park had been the site of Edo Castle, the place where shoguns ruled until 1868. Edo Castle had been built primarily of wood so there's little left of the original building because over the years stronger materials were used as improvements were made. Tours are available - but we didn't take one.
 |
| A little piece of the Imperial Palace |
 |
| Imperial Palace Gates |
Afternoon and Evening
Our next activity was a stop in the Ginza shopping area, which has fairly high-end goods. Unlike US malls that are maybe two stories high but take up huge acreage, these malls are more vertical, featuring 7 or 8 floors of shops. The three of us from our small group looked around a bit but none of us are really shoppers. Lunch was not included on the tour so we got some snacks to tide us over until dinner. The bus was leaving mid-afternoon and while the three of us were on it, others opted to stay and shop, returning to the hotel either by taxi or subway. However, as we'd been traveling for over two weeks at this point, a rainy afternoon lounging in the hotel was not all bad.
That night we had a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner with appetizers, sashimi, fish, steak, rice and dessert. It was quite good and it was amazing to drive through the city with everything lit up in neon. We had one more day to go and while we didn't realize it yet, the rain in the city actually meant good things for our tour the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment