Movement of the people . . .

Much has changed since we last flew from Heathrow terminal 5 two years ago and all for the better as we sailed through. With QR code on phone it was a similar experience when we landed at Haneda, unlike many who were stuck literally completing their paperwork at immigration and customs. Yet again, faced with a sea of sheets of A4 paper with black block capital letters we missed the man holding up our names – we are useless! Found eventually, he dispatched us efficiently with all our train tickets/passes and a few slips of paper with key Japanese phrases.

An early arrival flight meant we had a full day so always up for a challenge, and on very little sleep we made the incredibly intelligent decision to confront the two busiest parts of Tokyo – Shinjuku station and the Shibuya scramble crossing. Shinjuku station is not only the busiest station in Japan, with up to 2.7 million people going through it daily it’s the busiest in the world. Armed with hours of YouTube experience we managed to navigate from one station to the other without getting lost. One day all transport systems will function like this. It’s not just about the coding of each station, and the information on the platform (where to stand for each door in each carriage), the information on the screens above the door in the carriage (time to next stop, which side the doors open) – its about the culture of the Japanese. There is no scrum to get on/off the train as they form orderly queues, even in rush hour, allowing everyone to disembark first. Whilst there are piped jingles/musak on the platform, inside the train the carriage is silent. With continuous warnings there is no ringing/talking on phones. There is no leakage of music or games from headphones – continuous warnings about that too. You are even warned not to look at your phone when walking as it could be “annoying and dangerous to others”. When can we implement this in the UK?

When using the trains/underground throughout Tokyo we never got lost once – we “Suica’d” everywhere like pros. Once we got out of the station though it was a different matter. . . Took us 40 minutes to find the Shibuya scramble crossing. Considering 3000 people can cross the seven crossings of this junction each time you’d have thought we would have found it easily just by following the crowd. It was unusually quiet when we went (only about half the normal number) – that’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We did see the nutters in go-karts though.

See a video of everyone taking their selfies on the crossing here

We couldn’t avoid some of Tokyo’s bright lights and Don Quijote is a huge megastore where at least one floor is devoted to just sweets and chocolates. I have never seen so many different kit-kat flavours.

Wednesday we had a guide for a full day. The weather was scheduled to be wet, very wet, and it didn’t disappoint particularly in the afternoon. We thought his strength and value would be the cultural and hidden Tokyo.

The Meiji Jingũ Shinto shrine in Harajuko is set in beautiful surroundings that are so tranquil despite being in central Tokyo. The trees and plants were donated from all around Japan to beautify the shrine. The entrance is via one of the largest Torii gates in the country and is made from huge single pieces of Cyprus wood imported from Taiwan. The chrysanthemum flower on these gates signifies royalty as the shrine is to the Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken. There are chrysanthemum festivals and the photos are not of bonsai trees but of miniature chrysanthemums grown in the style of bonsai – they live for a year and then cuttings are taken for next year’s plant. Only the Gods can walk down the centre of the walkways so mere mortals like us have to keep to the sides.

The walkway to the shrine is lined by bottles of alcohol – Bourgogne on the left and ceremonial Sake on the right. There is also some poetry written by the Emperor and Empress – use google/apple translate on the photo to see what they had to say. The main area has spaces dedicated to their customs – “Meoto Kusu” or “husband and wife” trees are bound together with a ceremonial rope or “shimenowa” which means the trees are holy. They symbolise the strong marriage of the Emperor and the Empress and couples pray for as a strong a marriage as theirs. I plead the 5th. . . There are areas to buy good luck charms, fortunes and tie your “bad” fortunes up on a rack to make sure they don’t come true. There are also areas for “Ema” or personal prayers that are hung up near to holy trees. In the Shinto religion there are ceremonies when boys reach age 3 and 5 and for girls age 3 and 7 – “Shichigosan”. Clearly this religion is adapting to the 21st century as you can buy good luck charms to avoid road traffic accidents and also pay to have your car spiritually cleansed!

From here we explored the adjacent modern area of Harajuko, including the sky garden above Dior, some Sake tasting and Takeshita Street – I’m sure you can spot us on the photos. Most modern shopping areas are littered with Capsule vending machines or “Gachapon” – consumerism at its best or worst depending on your perspective. Appealing to the “collecting nature” of more sophisticated users each shrine, temple, tourist attraction, train station etc has its own stamp with some having a dedicated calligrapher to authenticate it. Of course these have to paid for and stored/stamped only in official books for this purpose. Animal cafes are big here and the micropig one seems to be the most popular. Informing me that Capybara are descended from rats is not going to entice me to visit them.

Watch a video of the micropig cafe here

It was pouring by the time we got to the Sensojii Temple in Asakusa but that didn’t deter the tourists, or us. It is Tokyo’s oldest temple. Whilst a Buddhist temple they have similar religious customs to those seen at the Shinto shrine with dedicated areas for Ema and the selling of good luck charms and fortunes, although we didn’t’ see any car purification here. The main areas around the temple are for shops and entertainment. Whilst many of the shops are clearly just for tourists there are some hidden gems such as the 100 year old papier-mache shop with the most dainty and exquisitely decorated figures. Other than that there is plenty of plastic autumnal leaf decoration and kimono hire shops. In the entertainment district there is a popular game of “small orange fish” catching – the nets are made of paper so when the net dissolves your time is up. This relates to the origin of the temple – two brothers were fishing in the nearby river and caught a gold statue of the Goddess Kannon. Each time they put it back in the river, it was caught again.

Watch a video of small orange fish catching here

The highlight of the day was a late afternoon visit to Yanaka. No neon, just beautiful traditional houses and shops. My favourites were the traditional bookshop and the art gallery. In this area is a very old Nezu-jinja shrine, bizarrely next to a medical school. It is one of the oldest shrines in Tokyo being 1900 years old and has a stunning Torii gate walkway (in which someone got stuck with his umbrella).

With one day left we continued our theme of culture going to the Gotokuji Cat shrine in Setagaya which celebrates the origin of the lucky cat as allegedly a cat invited a nobleman into the shrine to shelter from a storm and prevented him being struck by lightening. Now these lucky cats are worldwide. This shrine is dedicated to “right paw raised” cats – right paw is for luck with money, left paw is for people, black cats ward off evil and white cats are for family/social. So which one did we buy?

In the afternoon we returned to Asakusa intending to a) get better photos/video or b)play the “small orange fish” catching game or c) both¹. However in the middle of the day with as clear a sky as we were going to get, we went up to the South Tower viewing deck of the Government Metropolitan Building. Much less crowded than the Tokyo or Sky Tower. And yes we saw Mt Fuji, although we’d already seen it from our hotel bedroom window – did you notice how I just sneaked that in!! The photos don’t do the view justice but you can identify it. That evening we returned to the Government Metropolitan buildings to see the light show, followed by our first bowl of ramen. It looked too good to eat and was aptly named “Rainbow ramen”. I don’t know whether to be offended or not when the waiter asked us with a knowing smile if we wanted to wear aprons to eat it . . .

And with that our first three days in Tokyo are done – it’s been full on and we are looking forward to the change of pace and nature in Hakone. The weather is supposed to be good and the voucher says “Mt Fuji and lake view” for the room . . . .

1: We couldn’t find the “small orange fishing”game despite looking for it for over 30 minutes🤦🏻‍♀️