Tokyo, Japan

Today was our last day in Japan…we spent it trying to see more of Tokyo. We aren’t terribly interested in modern cities so we hired a guide to take us around to some of the older sites here. Our guide was Richard, a Japanese born, half-Japanese half-English young man. He did a great job and we also got to talk about the cultures of our two countries.

We started off at the Meiji Jingu Shrine. This was established in 1920 as a shrine to commemorate Emperor Meiji, who died in 1912, and the Empress Shoken. The original temple was lost in a fire and was rebuilt in the 1950s. There also are gardens here that apparently have beautiful irises in June.

From there we went to see the Imperial Palace. The emperor resides there so you can’t actually go in without a prearranged appointment, but the grounds are impressive with moats and many, many carefully manicured pine trees. Most of the palace had to be rebuilt after bombings during WWII.

We also went to the Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to the Japanese who died in wars Japan was involved in from 1868-1947. There is a listing of over 2 million Japanese men, women, and children. The shrine is somewhat controversial because it includes war criminals. Our guide says that some consider it okay because all of those 2 million souls reside here so the few criminal souls are, I guess, watered down by all of the good souls there. He also said that since the souls are housed there they cannot leave, so the criminal souls cannot get out.

We went shopping in the Asakusa area. There were many small shops with food, household goods, and various trinkets. This all is on Nakamise-dōri which begins at the Thunder Gate and leads up to the Senso-ji Temple. This is Tokyo’s oldest temple, established in 645. The current temple was reconstructed after bombings during WWII.

After that we decided that we were all walked and subway-ed out and called it a day.

We have really enjoyed our time here. We plan on coming back again!