Getting There

It's been a long time coming! Japan has been on the bucket list since forever, but a combination of the cost of the place and it's deeply inconvenient geographic location meant that we have been unable to make it happen until now. Whilst the global position has not materially changed since we started travelling, the currency exchange rate certainly has. As such, now seemed like as good a time as any to make the trip.

We took a direct flight from London to Tokyo on JAL. Under normal circumstances this would be around 12 hours but due to current global events, we had to detour down an unnervingly narrow corridor between Ukraine and Israel. Who knew that Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan would be everyone's favourite countries to overfly? There was also a minor detour to avoid North Korea, otherwise it was plain sailing. 14½ hours of plain sailing, that is! We had never been on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner before. The designers of this plane surely had two jobs: 1) to keep the hardware healthily separated from the scenery and 2) to provide a comfortable environment for the self-loading cargo. Rather unusually for modern-day Boeing, they managed the former. They spectacularly did not manage the latter with brutally uncomfortable seats and an overheated cabin. Honestly, Boeing, you had one two jobs. None of this was the fault of Japanese Airlines, who looked after us very well - other than making us eat [deliberately] cold noddles and seaweed with sticks.

As it turned out, we left Heathrow early Monday morning and arrived at dawn the following day having stayed away from the hard bits of scenery and the war zones. This meant that a) as we descended into Tokyo's Haneda airport we were treated to a spectacular view of Mt Fuji (she is often shrouded in cloud by the afternoon) and b) as Megan pointed out, Japan truly was the land of the Rising Sun.

Hit The Ground Running

After our early morning arrival, we had a few tasks lined up. We had to pick up a WiFi hotspot device since roaming in Japan is a ludicrously expensive proposition; we had to obtain some prepaid cash cards for use on Tokyo's public transport and we had to exchange some vouchers for Japan Rail. These rail cards represent extremely good value for money and will enable us to travel around as much of the country as we wish - all inclusive. Luckily we managed to secure these passes before Japan Rail increased the prices by about 60% in an attempt to curtail the number of travellers using the service. It seems that Japan is on everyone's list now and the locals are starting to get a bit annoyed. All done with these tasks, we were ready to head for downtown Tokyo at 8:30am.

This was a bit of a problem, since we couldn't check in to our hotel until 3pm! Our hosts did agree to store our luggage, so we headed off to take a look at some of the sights, oblivious to the fact that we'd been on the road for about 24 hours already.

Already old hands at the local public transport, we took the subway round to the most popular Buddhist temple in Tokyo: Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺). There are a lot of people here! Sure, it's not a patch on China or India in the crowd department, but it was rather overwhelming for a couple of very weary travellers. You don't get the reputation of being the most widely visited religious site in the world without just cause! Of course there is a legend associated with this temple that recounts some stuff that supposedly happened in 628AD making it the oldest temple in Tokyo. That's rather a weird reputation given that it was destroyed during World War II. We will probably return to this subject in a later installment of this blog.

In common with most religious sites, the approach road is lined with stalls hawking all sorts of tangentially related tat (aka votive offerings) and sweets.

We were pretty done in by that point, so after a quick Matcha ice cream, we repaired to the hotel who were finally prepared to allow us in.

Sightseeing

Our timetable dictated that we have only one full day in Tokyo until we return at the end of our tour, so we were determined to fit in a few of the major sights. This largely consisted of legging around town on the metro and popping up in various parts of the city to see some temple or feature. The rather imposing Government Building provided us with panoramic views of the city from the 45th floor. Whilst the views were spectacular, they didn't particularly help us orientate as it was just buildings as far as the eye could see. We did, of course, spot the Tokyo Sky Tree which is the world's tallest tower. We did not spot the Godzilla monster that is reputed to be devouring one of the tower blocks.

We travelled to the Harajuku district, which has a famous food area centred around Takeshita Street (maybe that should be infamous). It is also renowned for its Lolita girls and boutique shopping. Boringly, we came here to visit the Meiji Jingu shrine (明治神宮). It's dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, who only died in 1912, so the place is not particularly old. The grounds are rather large so, even though it's a popular destination for tourists, it didn't feel nearly as rammed as Sensō-ji. It is of a rather similar form though. These shrines are rather incongruous, surrounded as they are by what one normally thinks of as downtown Tokyo.

We walked from Meiji Jingu to the famous Shibuya Crossing that Megan was insistent we see. Probably the most famous pedestrian crossing in the world, this place is... a pedestrian crossing. A lot of people use it. The end. By now we were hungry and Steve had spotted an interesting looking side street that was lined with food places. Actually it was underneath the railway tracks behind Shibuya (the famous crossing). We ate some scalding hot noodles. Turns out the place is called Nonbei Yokocho or the Alley of the Drunkards. Fancy that.

Lastly and exhaustedly (?) we crossed town yet again to Naritasan Fukagawa Fudōdō Temple where a bunch of Buddhists do budda-related things with sticks, massive drums and fire. Naturally, we don't know exactly what it was they were doing, but it seemed to be working out quite well for them judging by the cars parked around the back of the temple. No pictures from the inside as Buddhists don't do that sort of thing. It was a pretty impressive ceremony though.