My Travel Adventures

We split up in the morning because each of us had a different idea of what to do with our last few hours in Tokyo. Ciaran wanted to have a nice breakfast at a bakery, while Brent and Joel needed to make a run to pick up Joel’s international driver’s licence from their next hotel in Tokyo (they had forgotten to get one while in the US, so they mailed themselves a copy). In the meantime, I realised I had not yet taken any nice pictures of the Tokyo Skytree, so I made a little trip to the Kameido Tenjin Shrine, where one can see the tower rise majestically above the temple’s old roof and the wisteria frames crisscrossing the gardens in front of it.

Today was light on sightseeing, as Ciaran and I had to make the two-and-a-half-hour Shinkansen trip from Kyoto to Tokyo (not including the transportation times to and from hotels) and because we met multiple friends. As soon as we left our bags at our apartment near Tokyo Skytree, we took the metro to the very other end of the city to meet Kevin and Jaya at the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is one of Tokyo’s most famous even though it was completed relatively recently – in 1921 – using materials from every prefecture ruled by Japan, including Karafuto (modern day Sakhalin), Korea, Kwantung, and Taiwan. Although it did not really blow us away, we were impressed by the very roundly pruned trees in its courtyard.