June 20, 2023

Before we arrived in Tokyo, we realized that the Tokyo Tower was listed as one of the places we would visit on both days – the first day was “Panoramic Tokyo” which included the tower, and the second day was “Tokyo Garden and Tower”. I don’t really know how we missed that info, but I guess planning excursions for 6 months might be some excuse!  It turned out to be helpful because I still needed to find a place to get my nails done and now we had a specific location   (near the tower) to look.  The city is huge and while I had lots of names of places, we had no idea where they were.  So I found one, she had an English website with a scheduling app and I was able to make an appointment for our second day in port – walking distance from the tower.

Here is our arrival in Tokyo.

Today our guide was Muchi. 

She told us that Tokyo has 14 million population out of 126 million in all of Japan. Edo was the original name of Tokyo. Tokyo means “Eastern Capital”.  The early days were ruled by the Shogun and were feudal times.  Emperors replaced the Shoguns and Japan still has an Emperor who is a symbol of the state but has no political function and is ceremonial.  The leader is a prime minister.

We passed the Diet which is the parliamentary building, and the Imperial Palace grounds.  The Emperor resides at the palace and while the surroundings are open to the public, the actual palace is only open two days a year – January 2 and the Emperor’s birthday, February 25. There is a grove outside the palace with 500 pine trees.   We visited the palace grounds on our last visit to Tokyo.

The Tokyo Tower is a broadcasting tower that was designed to look like the Eiffel Tower.  It was built in 1968 and is 333 meters high. We went to the observatory at 150 meters.  Again, it was pretty hazy and hard to see very far.  But what was so interesting was the groups of school children carrying packs with note taking areas who were at the various viewpoints taking notes.

I would say that you see about half the people here wearing masks. They are not mandatory and some people wear them all year around because of the sun, pollution and also germs.

You see many cemeteries close to city buildings.

Again, the rest rooms are very clean, modern and interesting.  They have seats for children right in the women’s stalls too so they are safe while their moms are using the toilet.

These are wooden hearts and towers that people write their wishes on and hang on this board.  You see these in many places.

In every city we see this poster that warns you, as a foreign tourist, about the high cost of Japan’s medical system of you have an accident or need care.  They are in the train stations and cruise terminals.

After the tour, we told the guide we wanted to leave the bus and get back to the ship on our own.  We are here overnight, so we wanted to explore, so we let our guide know and set out.  We wanted to see where the nail salon was so that tomorrow we wouldn’t have to search around too long. I have to mention how incredibly polite and helpful every single person we met was.  In fact, they were willing to miss their trains to help us.  A young woman led us to the salon which we were close to, but might have gone around and around the block if she hadn’t shown us exactly where it was.

We bought a 2 day subway pass (about $8 US) and went to the Tokyo Station where we had thought we would meet Erin and Mui for a ramen dinner.  But it was way too early and we didn’t know if we would be there too late, so we had a late lunch instead. food you ordered.

Pat figuring out what station we wanted. 

The station from the outside.

The underground station is HUGE and not always easy to navigate, but we found a nice place and had our ramen.  You push the button for what you want (pictures and in Japanese – some have English too), pay and get a ticket, then they take you to your seat and bring the

The food was so delicious and filling that I had ice cream for dinner.  Yes, just ice cream.

We did some more exploring – Japanese Iris is also in season now.

Before heading back to the ship, we stopped for a snack and a drink in the Shinjuku section of the city which is known as the entertainment area.  There are lots of bars and restaurants and there are designated smoking areas on some streets. There are “smoking patrol” officers  walking around to be sure no one smokes anywhere else. We took the subway and soon realized that there are three transit systems and our ticket was only for the subway- which turned out just fine.  The routes are in different colors and the stops are numbered making it easy to follow once you know where you are going!

We took the subway back to the monorail station that takes you to the new international cruise port where our ship is docked.  It was not built in 2019 when we were last here and it is beautiful. 

Here is the nighttime view.

At night we had a movie and popcorn! And we will be ready for our second day in wonderful Tokyo.