The Great Wave

BACK TO TOKYO

Three weeks fly past when you are having fun. And we are having fun. We took the shinkansen from Kanazawa to Tokyo. This is a new 2½ hour super express that just started in March 2015. Smooth! We returned to the lovely Hotel Niwa where we had been on our initial 5 days in Tokyo. It was nice to hit familiar ground. On Saturday evening we ventured to a somewhat lesser known part of Tokyo – Shimokitazawa, which is known as a small, bohemian part of town. We wandered the pleasant streets beyond sunset and stopped off for a curry in the neighborhood. 

We alighted the metro at Shinjuku on the way home to briefly view the night scene there.

Sunday was our last full day in Japan. We headed out first to Harajuku Station, trying to avoid the huge crowds of adolescents that gather there to buy the latest fashions.

Takeshita St in Harajuku

Our destination was Yoyogi Park and the nearby Meiji Shrine. The shrine is entered through one of the four great wooden torii gates, which are open to long winding, tree-canopied pathways to the shrine itself. Once there, we find ourselves in a large square surrounded by temple buildings. We were particularly lucky this day to see a wedding procession go by. We wandered through the lovely placid grounds for a while before finding our way to the neighboring Yoyogi Park. 

Sake Barrels

Yoyogi Park represented a whole different perspective on Japanese culture with throngs of people strolling along pathways filled with musicians, artists, people in costumes, dancers, families, and even a rockabilly danceathon.

That evening we headed to the 25^th floor of the Bunkyo Building with the hope of catching a glimpse of Mount Fuji. Although it was sunny there was a general haze that prevented any sighting. We decided to go down to the Tokyo Dome grounds where there is an amusement park that looked quite interesting. Paul McCartney had played Saturday night at the Dome and it seemed right to make a kind of pilgrimage. 

It turns out that there was an annual event at the amusement park that we happened to chance upon. Several Japanese youngsters were dressed up in cosplay outfits representing all kinds of manga/anime characters.

We rounded up the evening with fish and chips and a beer at a nearby bar before returning to the Bunkyo building for some night shots.