Leaving Tokyo 26th April

 Okay, my final entry. Written as we sit in the departures hall at Haneda.

Just to re-cap how we got here, we booked in to do a tour today. This was for several reasons - a chance to see a bit more of Tokyo, a way to pass some of the day as our flight isn't until 10pm this evening, and a way to get to the airport; taxis to the Tokyo airports tend to be very expensive and the transfer with Cunard was going to cost even more. This way we got ourselves and our bags to the airport and killed some time on the way.

It turned out our first stop was Meiji shrine, which we'd gone to a couple of weeks ago. But it was still a nice way to spend some time, the gardens are lush and calm, we were much less tired than last time, and the weather was less humid. So we wandered about and looked at the shrine. It's hard to understand what's going on, there are stalls selling prayer paper and offerings and people burning incense.

Then back on the bus and off to the second shrine, the Senso-ji. This is the busiest shrine in Japan and it shows. We walked around to the main entrance which is the Kaminarimon Gate or Gate of Thunder and then there were long alleys of stalls selling all sorts of souvenirs like fans, chopsticks, magnets, shoes, and then the food and drink stalls. At it's packed, all you can do is shuffle along and be jossled and try not lose each other. All of which was a big contrast to the tree-lined avenues approaching the shrine this morning.


When we finally got to the main hall it was a little less crowded, particularly once we got off to one side. From there we wandered around a bit and bought some snacks from an adjacent shop.


And so we killed some time and then the bus took us to Haneda. We got here about 3pm, but don't expect thered to be a Virgin counter for a few more hours. So we'll sit and read and wait. Then tonight it's an overnight flight to Cairns, a few hours there in the morning, then another flight to Sydney and home mid-afternoon on Saturday 27th.

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