In our stride

I dare say we'll find out how they work in the next 3 weeks

Still somewhat jetlag ridden, we'd had to prise ourselves out of bed this morning for breakfast by 9.30. The subsequent knock on the door at 10 a.m. was a polite reminder to relinquish our room or else 'no cleaning'. I showed ten fingers to indicate the number of minutes we needed to get ourselves ready and vacate the room. No option of hanging a 'do not disturb' sign on the door here. Rules are rules, and if you're still in your room, then hard luck, no cleaning, fat chance of a weekend lie-in.


The Imperial Palace Gardens

We trekked out toTakebashi metro station courtesy of our two-day metro pass and arrived outside the Imperial Palace Gates wondering where the crowds had gone. After the hustle and bustle of the past two days, the Palace gardens were tranquility personified. Access to the Palace grounds is limited to the gardens, which function like a green lung in the heart of Tokyo. The sun was pretty much beating down, so the air-conditioned resting places they have dotted around the place come as a welcome relief.

Thumbs up to the Japanese for public-spiritednesss I say. Public toilets are never far away, the museums even have lounges where you can rest your weary feet and the tube stations are provided with water fountains. Tokyo might see a throughflow of millions of people every day, but they still make the effort to pamper to creature comforts. And they even have special Smoking Areas set aside along main thoroughfares, how kind!


Mini beer cans at Meiji-Jingu?

At one point, Raph chirped up and said, "isn't Tokyo small?". He wasn't referring to its 20 million inhabitants of course, but to the ease with which one can get around. The metro system is just wonderful and you can get across town from one major 'hub' to another in less than 20 minutes. So it was that we arrived back in Harajuku at the Meiji-Jingu shrine, the biggest in Tokyo. The guidebook said, "it's almost deserted on weekdays", but of course, today was a Sunday and now we had rediscovered the crowds again. Whether by luck or coincidence, when we arrived at the actual shrine there was a shinto wedding ceremony being performed. Interesting indeed, and we watched the family portrait being taken. Very austere. Or was it perhaps a funeral?


Japanese wedding: group portrait

20 minutes later we were back on the other side of town at the Edo-Tokyo Museum which basically tells - interactively - the history of Tokyo since it became Japan's supreme capital under the Shogun. Next door was the Sumo museum, but since it had started to rain and we were shattered by now, we headed back home to Ueno.