Tokyo 6th April

 I should add here that it's spring, and it's cold - but at least not raining so far. I think it got up to about 14 degrees, so quite brisk and chilly all day. It also means we got cherry blossom season. This is entirely luck as it didn't figure in our planning at all.

Anyway, when we checked in we decided to get the hotel breakfast, largely because it didn't look like there would be alternatives close by. That was probably a good decision - the buffet breakfast (we had to queue to get a table) was good, with lots of international options and we ate so much we didn't need lunch. Also, Tokyo doesn't seem to start very early, at least on Saturdays, so alternatives might have been thin.

We started walking down to the waterfront, where there were a few cherry blossoms and a Statue of Liberty (a French-Japanese thing, 1/7th scale).


Then we walked south to Central Square, where there were more blossoms and a huge Gundam statue, not sure why. At one point I thought of trying to go to the famour cherry blossom avenues, but it didn't seem necessary as they're so widespread.

From there we walked through the shopping centre and back to the elevated railway station, right in front of our hotel. Buying tickets was straightforward and we took a train into Shimbashi Station. We then walked through Ginza, looking in windows and went through the Uniqlo store (it's something like 9 floors) and the Ginza Six shopping centre.

From here we wlked north the the Hibiya Park, where there were more people picnicking under the cherry blossoms.


We walked on to the gardens surrounding th Imperial Palace, parts of which were stunning while there were also huge swathes of ashphalt.



We were quite worn out by this stage, so we walked back to Shimbashi station and took the train back to our hotel.

After a rest we went out again, riding the train to Toyosu and wandering pretty much at random as we were too tired to venture any further. This part of the city is endless office blocks with parks in between. In the evening we walked to the Aqualand shopping centre adjacent to our hotel - it has some good shops, some bizarre shops (an underwear place called Hip Shop), pet shops and a petting zoo. We found a cheap seafood restaurant, ordered by sign language and had a good meal.

Location: 1-chōme-9-1 Daiba, Minato City, Tokyo 135-8625, Japan

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