This past weekend, I took my final quick trip over to Tokyo!
This is my third trip to Tokyo, and I realized something while I was there – I truly had seen basically everything there was to see.
Tokyo is a great adventure to the young ryuugakusei, but eventually you do become desensitized. All the shopping you can do in Tokyo is possible in Osaka – and aside from specific shrines or the Imperial Palace, Kyoto has everything you could want for cultural sightseeing. Which is why I’m glad the friend who came with me had some specific goals in mind – it was her first time in Tokyo, and she made sure to keep us busy the whole weekend!
While we did go to a lot of places I’d aleady been to, she was also interested in seeing lots of things I hadn’t seen yet! So after going around Asakusa and Shibuya, we went to see Meiji shrine.
It took us a long time to find the shrine – we got stuck in the park, at first. Lucky for us, it’s sakura season, so there was plenty to see as we wandered aimlessly!
When we did get to the shrine, it was stunning – the wooden torii there is almost was impressive as the large orange torii at Heian-jingu. We followed the path through the trees and up towards the main shrine. Unfortunately, the main shrine is under restoration, so the whole thing was in a big construction box – not really the prettiest to look at. However, we did get to see some of the other things lining the way.
We didn’t stick around there long – with the main shrine under construction, there wasn’t much to see, and it was already getting late. We headed back to our guesthouse, for the night.
The next day, we spent a lot of time just wandering the city – mostly lookin at the sakura.
Most of the day was eating, looking at flowers, and so much walking. We saw Tokyo Sky Tree in the distance, but it was too cloudy to really justify going up.
Once we’d exhausted sakura viewing for the day, ti was late again, and we went back to the guesthouse. We headed home early the next morning, so we didn;t get the chance to do much else, but I think this was a really good last impression to leave Tokyo on! I’ll be back someday.