Getting springy in Tokyo...

Our long trip in Japan is almost over - to finish off we had a few days in Tokyo to get our washing done and do some final, relaxed, sightseeing. It seems that Spring has arrived in Tokyo, it's now about 5-9C, much warmer than we we first arrived, and forecast rain thankfully stayed away. Enjoying the sunshine over several days, we visited a few places we missed out on during our previous stops here. One night, we felt another modest earthquake which shook our bed on the 30th floor in Tokyo, our second this trip.

There's a lot of Tokyo we didn't cover!

Manga billboard ads near Shinjuku Station.

Rated as one of the three best gardens in Japan, we took the JR Yamamote line to Sugamo Station, and walked about a kilometer through what we saw to be the very upmarket suburb of Komagome in Bunkyo-ku to the Rikugien Gardens. Our route passed very nice stand-alone houses with their own lock-up car garages, surely a relative rarity in this huge city.

A wintery feel in Rikugien Gardens, brown grass and no cherry blossoms yet.

How to brighten up a shady corner of a garden.

The Edo style garden itself was a delight, but we were about a month too early for the legendary cherry blossoms to be out. Plum blossoms were out and colourful. Rikugien (which means "six principles of waka or poetry") was built around 1700 for the fifth shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi and supposedly reproduces 88 scenes from famous poems. We saw several examples where a posted photograph demonstrated that a particular aspect had been designed to look like a specific Japanese location.

Stepping stones in Rikugien Gardens.

For another garden, we took the Metro to Otemachi, and found our way through a serious business district to the Imperial Palace in the Chiyoda district where the East Garden is open to the public. This was also a pleasant spot with the plum trees in blossom, but historically it contains the ruins (moats and ramparts only) of the legendary Edo Castle, now become a look out. Edo Castle is where the Tokugawa shogunate was established, lording over 300 daimyo throughout Japan, and lasted from 1603 to 1868 when the Meiji Restoration brought about the fall of Edo. Fire destroyed the castle in 1853 after which the new Imperial Palace was built nearby. The firebombing of 1945 devastated this site.

New blossoms and old ramparts at the Imperial Palace.

Essential study for touring this country.

Plums blossom a month before the cherries.

Bamboo grove at the Imperial Palace East Garden.

And, within yet another garden, we went to the important Meiji Shrine which abuts Harajuku Station, but we walked there from our Hilton in Shinjuku and entered via the "back gate". This shrine commemorates Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken. Meiji (1852-1912) is credited with transforming Japan from an "isolationist feudal state to a capitalist and imperial world power" (Wikipedia) and is revered around the nation. This major Tokyo shrine was completed in 1921, destroyed in WW2, and since rebuilt.

Near Harajuku Station, the main pedestrian entrance to the Meiji Shrine.

Gate to the Meiji Shrine.

Fantastic wooden door at the Meiji Shrine.

Sake has been donated for centuries out of respect to the Emperor and Empress.

Wild gardens of the Meiji Shrine.

We were lucky enough to be in town for the annual Tokyo Marathon, one of the six "majors" in the world's marathon gland slam. We had a spectacular view from our hotel room. Fortunately, they didn't take applications on the day, lest we were tempted to enter! Runners from Kenya and Ethipia won the race. Being only 200m from the start, the Hilton Hotel accommodated many entrants, so it was busier than ever what with Chinese New Year still raging.

First wave of runners in the 2018 Tokyo Marathon.

Tokyo Marathon runners heading through Shinjuku.

After trying and failing to find this on two separate occasions, we finally located the stunning 30m mural by Japanese artist Taro Okamoto called "Myth of Tomorrow" in a prominent location in a busy building at Shibuya Station. The mural of a burning landscape is an abstract depiction of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and was commissioned for (but never installed in) a hotel in Mexico City in 1968, and (after being lost for decades) was finally given the exposure it deserves at Shibuya in 2003. We were pleased to have finally found the mural and discovered that its location also offers a better view of the busy Shibuya crossing than we had seen before.

"Myth of Tomorrow" by Taro Okamoto at Shibuya.

Supposedly the busiest crossing in the world, at Shibuya, on a Sunday.

And one sunset we went to the seaside, to the district known as Odaiba, a very modern tourism-oriented part of a renewal project on man-made islands in Tokyo Bay. Odaiba started as a string of small man made fort islands ("daiba" means "fort") built in late 1800's to guard against possible attacks from the sea, specifically the USA. Modern redevelopment was spurred along by construction of the "Rainbow Bridge" (1993) and the Yurikamome ("black-headed seagull") line in 2006. The Yurikamome line uses a driverless automatic rubber tyred train sets, so is fun to ride on, but as we discovered on the way home, it's also a serious commuter route, being packed with businessmen after work.

Panorama of Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo skyline.

Traversing the Rainbow Bridge, the Yurikamome subway line uses driverless trains.

Futuristic Fuji TV building at Odaiba.

Skillful artist painting watercolour of Rainbow Bridge.

A puzzling sight in Tokyo, the one seventh scale replica of the Statue of Liberty at Odaiba.

All Tokyo trains are always full, but on the Oedo Line that same evening we encountered crowding of the level that you read about. Our subway train was so full, the passengers so packed together, that it would be impossible to fall over. We're taller than most Japanese, so could see what was happening - many passengers don't even bother to hang onto the straps, they are held upright and in position completely surrounded by and buffered by their neighbours. (And, everyone on board was totally focused on their mobile phones - we tried to imagine the system behind this massive use of bandwidth in an enclosed train maybe 100m underground. We even received a text message during the crush.) The manoevering to get on and off at stations is indescribable. Luckily, almost everyone got off at Shinjuku, like we did.

Hazy sunset over Tokyo west of the city.

Welcoming decorations at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office.

So, what's our wrap-up of Japan? We discovered that there are two Japans - one packed with foreign tourists, and the other where there are few. The two Japans are entirely different. In the Japan occupied by the Japanese, the trains may be crowded but the streets are clean and the people are restrained and polite - they say konichiwa to each other on the footpaths, even to us. Pedestrians walk on the left, but in touristy Japan, mostly populated by loud-mouthed visitors from elsewhere in Asia and elsewhere, the Japanese are bullied into walking on the right, and their traditional protocols seem to fall by the wayside. Oh, how the locals must deplore these and other affronts caused by outsiders! Japanese must feel squeezed out of their own cherished beauty spots. Non-touristy Japan is a much nicer place to be.

A fair spread over Hokkaido and Honshu, but nothing south of Miyajima, nothing on Kyushu or Shikoko or any outer island. There's still a lot of Japan to see!

During our most recent visit to touristy Japan, Hakone, we were alert to the effects of this invasion and paid particular attention. Japanese facilitators are everywhere, giving amplified advice on where to stand on crowded platforms for example, what bus to catch etc, but it's all in crystal clear Japanese, a language which is incomprehensible to 80-90% of the audience. We know from local English language newspapers that this is an issue well understood by authorities, and they plan great improvements for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Specifically, we've heard that tsunami warnings, which can be transmitted to every mobile phone in a region, will soon be available in English. There's a long way to go.

Kagurazaka and elsewhere...

We have seen beautiful decorations like this in front of houses and shops all over Tokyo.

JR Train arrives at IIdabashi Station by the canal.

Now we are exploring Tokyo using the undergroud subway system, often called the Tokyo Metro but that is just the name of one of the companies operating subterrainian railways here. Another is Toei Subway. The networks are separate, and you can tell you're moving from one to the other by colour schemes, branding and livery. Fortunately, all operators appear to show the connections to other operators, and our PASMO cards works on them all, and there are other swipe card systems going too.

Just another delicately decorated shopfront.

In Kagurazaka, like everywhere else, shrines were very popular for New Year's rituals.

Moorish type facade on this French Restaurant in Kagurazaka.

On recommendation, we spent a lot of time wandering around the "old Tokyo" locality called Kagurazaka. We walked there from Iidabashi metro station, mistakenly took the wrong exit so got lost for a while. Kagurazaka is a delightful enclave of narrow windy streets which are replete with shops plus restaurants and cafes showing a very strong European influence, mostly French. The area was very popular with locals enjoying their days off for New Year.

Kimono shop open for business.

Kagurazaka pharmacy.

It was not what we expected for "old Tokyo". The buildings are 2-4 storeys post-war reconstructions, by the look of them, but very close together. We expected "old" to be older than that!

This young lady served us a traditional New Year's drink, a hot sweet rice soup in front of her tiny shop.

This plaque appears to tell the story of Edo Castle at Kagurazaka.

We think this represents the old Edo Castle gate in this location.

Nearer the station, there are remains of ancient walls and a moat, and these may be part of the historic Edo Castle whose outer boundary was here. All interpretive signage was in Japanese, but we know the castle was here.

We found our way to NakaMeguro, a residential part of Tokyo on both sides of the quite pretty Meguro Canal. The canal was quite empty, but clear signage warned of how high floodwaters can get!

Meguro Canal shrouded in cheery trees which must be quite spectacular in season.

NakaMeguro seemed to have fully embraced the holiday spirit - nothing much was open. Cafes which would normally have been trading at the time were were here hunting for lunch were firmly closed. The two establishments which were open were so crowded with grateful patrons we couldn't get in.

JR's above ground Shibuya Station continually disgorges shoppers.

Streetscape of Shibuya Crossing.

So we repaired to (fairly nearby) Shibuya which was the diametric opposite to NakaMeguro - alive and bustling to the point of being frantic. Here we found a place for lunch and managed to get a good seat overlooking Shibuya Crossing, not the Starbucks Restaurant which has an uninterrupted view, but a pretty nice view anyway. Shibuya Crossing is famous, appearing in many movies - two adjacent multi-road intersections become synchronised scramble crossings with hundreds if not thousands of pedestrians negotiating them simultaneously. Quite spectacular, and we wonder if the day of our visit was "quiet" or "busy", being a holiday.

Shibuya Crossing as seen from a 1st Floor balcony.

At least the back lanes of Shibuya are free of vehicles.

Frantic happenings inside Shibuya 109.

Shibuya seems to be a hangout for the young. The intersections were constantly being transversed by huges semi-trailers whose sole purpose was to advertise some boy-band or girl-band or other. The buildings around the Crossing looked like Times Square, with all the neon signs and massive screens promoting music groups.

Just one of many large trucks promoting musical groups, traversing Shibuya Crossing.

Youngsters everywhere checking and updating their social media postings.

Already noisy enough, spruikers are very active (but often camera shy) in Shibuya shops.

Historical artifact outside Shibuya Station.

An apparent tourist attraction is fleets of go-carts which (like the semi-trailers) repeatedly pass through the Crossing in one direction or other, the drivers clad in fancy dress. Presumably these go-carts are licensed to be on public streets, and they don't cause any problems in the traffic, because, frankly, motor traffic here (and all over Tokyo) has been very quiet over this holiday period. In Sydney, city streets would be totally congested with motor vehicles even on holidays, but not here. Tokyo residents seem to be well conditioned to use public transport.

Go-carter at Shibuya Crossing.

Shibuya's shops were packed full of excited young women buying discount fashion items. Indeed, the biggest and most prominent, Shibuya 109, which we ventured into, seemed to be dangerously crowded with hysterical young shoppers.

The back streets of Shibuya.

Around the Yamanote Line...

The Yamanote Line is a JR (Japan Rail) above-ground train that navigates a large circle within inner Tokyo, taking about 90 minutes for one lap. It runs both directions, but we did it clockwise from Shinjuku getting off at several locations to have a look around the neighbourhood. Our PASMO cards, topped up previously, worked a treat, and the terminal gives you a clear indication of the balance at each swipe on.

New Year's Day, pretty quiet on the JR Yamanote Line.

At Tokyo Station, near the Imperial Palace, we just wanted to look at the renovated station building from outside. The renovation was completed in 2012 and restores the 98 year old building to its pre-war condition, having been bombed-out in 1945. It is a long and stunning building, moreso because of the magnificent empty square in front of it. With lawns and paving, and vehicles only at the extremes, the views of the building are superb.

Destroyed in WWII, beautifully restored Tokyo Station.

This station takes more trains than apparently any other in Japan, and lots of exploring to do around the station, most notably the Imperial Palace, but we saved that for another day.

Pachinko seems to be a captivating distraction for men, this one in Akihabara.

Crowded swap meet at Akihabara Station.

Akihabara is renowned as an electric city and we strolled aimlessly around the (very crowded) streets for a while. The electric retailers were fascinating, but the most interesting thing we saw was in the station forecourt where a huge gathering of men were involved in a swap meet of photographs of young female celebrities, we assume. Photos were being traded and placed in what looked like quite generic photo albums. (At Shibuya, we later saw a smaller version of this with young women swapping cards showing boy-band celebrites.)

Nautical themed temple in Ueno Park.

But the main part of our day was spent at Ueno Onshi Park, next to Ueno Station. We had been told that this would be very popular during the New Year holiday period, and indeed it was. The park is very large, and is home to the Ueno Zoo, several museums, many shrines. The latter were the subject of long queues of people lining up to pray and ring the bells. A large lake, Shinobazu Pond, is at one corner of the park, and its island features the famous Benzaiten shrine which had such a long queue that a facilitator was there to manage the crowd. The causeway to this shrine was lined with market stalls selling all manner of fast food products, including, we noted, kebabs, being run by a pair of decidely non-Japanese looking vendors.

Shinobazunoike Pond in the Ueno Onshi Park.

One of many stalls offering fast food to visitors tp park and shrine on New Year's Day.

Tori Gate leads to the Toshogu Shrine.

Washing and drinking rfitual at the Ueno Toshogu Shrine.

Hoping for health and prosperity in the New Year.

Eternal flame from and memorial to the Nagasaki A-Bomb blast.

Promises and prayers outside the Ueno Toshogu Shrine.

Visitors in front of the golden gate of the Ueno Toshogu Shrine.

The real reason we went to Ueno was to look at the Ueno Toshogu Peony Garden. The admission arrangements made it clear that this was the garden of the Ueno Toshogu Shrine, a magnificent gold-gated building with a fine path through a Tori Gate. A sign at the Garden apologised for the state of the peonies which had suffered due to "bad weather". The peonies on display looked pretty good, and were protected from the day's sunshine with straw umbrellas, and their stems and the soil around them were wrapped in straw matting. The day of our visit, 01 January, was the first day of the two month opening period for the garden.

Appreciation of the flowers in the Ueno Toshogu Peony Garden.

For this day of outings around the Yamanote Line, it was sunny and cool, about 9C, but no wind, and conditions were very pleasant.