Japan 2025

This morning we checked out, left our luggage in reception then took the metro to The Imperial Palace Gardens. It was lovely and warm in the sunshine and not too crowded on our arrival. They had some seriously big door bolts The gardens were surrounded by high rise office blocks built on reclaimed land, similar to Canary Wharf, The Palace was once by the sea! One of the turrets, restored in the 60's, the original Palace no longer exists after being destroyed by fire in the 1800's There were also a couple of lakes After a very disappointing buffet lunch, our mistake, made a poor choice! We met up with two of my choir friends and their husbands who happen to be on holiday in Japan at the moment. We went for a drink and a catch up which was lovely. Afterwards we walked back to our hotel via Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, a beautiful space full of locals and tourists enjoying the cherry blossom  After taking in the atmosphere whilst lying down under one of the cherry blossom trees, we had ...

We weren't disappointed to leave our noisy neighbours this morning as we checked out and headed for the railway station, via 7-11 to buy lunch for the train journey. From Matsumoto it was about an hour to return to Nagano then a quick platform change for the bullet train back to Tokyo, which took a further hour. We ate our lunch during the second journey. Back in Tokyo we headed to Team Lab Planets Tokyo, an immersive interactive experience in an area of Tokyo very reminiscent of Canary Wharf. The last part of the metro journey was very similar to the DLR Team Labs was a rather mind blowing experience. It was shoes and socks off, walking through some unusual environments including a room about 6 inches deep in water with patterns and reflections (its meant to be koi carp, but we couldn't see them. The Infinite crystal universe, very difficult to work out where to walk If you look closely and you will see the dots are actually people Floating in the falling universe of flowers w...

This morning we took our suitcases to reception to be forwarded for the last time, back to Tokyo and to the first hotel that we stayed in, seems like ages ago that we were there. A keen wind greeted us as we walked the 5 minutes from our hotel to the castle, which dates back around 400 years Just as it started to rain, we headed into the castle. After removing our shoes we were able to climb to the top, along with the much smaller crowds. There were 6 floors and the staircases got steeper, deeper and narrower the higher we climbed, not dissimilar to Himeji Castle. With views from the top, luckily by this time it had stopped raining. After a drink we wandered down Frog Street, a quaint brick street along the Metoba River which has been around since the 1500's and has frogs everywhere, particularly in the gift shops! We found an American/Japanese bar/cafe called The Story House and indulged in pulled pork burger and fries, delicious! They were doing a very good trade in homemade cake...

 This morning as we left our hotel we walked past an enormous queue, not sure what for! Walked to Kanazawa Station which has an impressive glass dome called the Motenashi (Welcome) Dome and a clock whose numbers are made up of the jets from the fountain. Although it's a slightly smaller station we still ended up having to ask directions to the right platform. We caught a more modern bullet train and completed the journey to Nagono, around 140 miles, in 55 minutes! Passing snow capped mountains to the right and The Sea of Japan to the left. As always, it seems, the lowlands are flat. There were several seriously long tunnels that we passed through.  A taxi ride up to Zenkoji Temple complex showed the stark difference between here and the big cities The temple was founded in 642 A.D and has one of the oldest Buddahs in Japan, as usual no photos were allowed inside and we had to remove our shoes. The main Temple had a pitch black passageway underneath the main altar in which you ...