The Fryhole

Since Nikkō is really close to Tokyo, it didn’t take us very long to get to Tokyo. While waiting for our Imperial Palace tour (you have to apply for a time slot online, and provide various information including your age, occupation, and other post-9/11 terrorist information), we wandered around Ginza. Since the Lonely Planet mentioned a Godzilla statue…. well, we obviously had to go in search of it! But since we were imagining some giant monument we were a little disappointed when we found this:

It is quite unnoticeable — we actually walked right by it in the street and went several blocks too far before deciding that we had gone too far and needed to go back and check again.

We ate a convenience store lunch (trust me, that’s not as gross as it sounds - convenience stores in Japan actually have decent food for a very reasonble price) at a fountain just outside the Palace walls.

The Palace itself was… underwhelming. A lot of it is off-limits, so there’s not a heck of a lot to see. Some if it is impressive though.

One of the best parts was the people who have to scale the walls of the moat to clean out the moss from in-between the rocks.

We think they should have ninja uniforms!  It would really add to the atmosphere of the Imperial Castle.  Maybe other retainers could even come out in mock-up Samurai armor and they could stage battles.
The gardens around the Imperial Palace are also quite nice - but you don’t need a reservation for those, just a number (like a coat check tag) so they can keep track of who is still there.  We entered them after our tour of the palace and walked around a bit… one of the most interesting things is that they have dedicated certain areas to be clones of other areas throughout Japan, so a lot of effort is taken to make them appear exactly as those other areas (including landscaping and foliage; and probably animals too).

After the Palace, we had some ramen and then took the Narita Express to meet Andrew. \o/  He was coming in on a flight from CDG (Paris), and we timed our arrival quite well, as neither group really had to wait for the other.  After collecting him, we took the Narita Express again, only this time Yokohama (and the Matsuzaki’s home) was our destination.

Upon our arrival there we got to meet Nanako (Kaori and Kenji’s child) for the very first time!

We introduced Andrew to everyone, and he fit right in. 

We relaxed and talked with the Matsuzaki family for a little bit and then headed off to bed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.