Shopping Around for a Tokyo Bus Tour

Yesterday I went on the included bus tour of downtown Tokyo. As expected it wasn't all that great. When we got to Tokyo Tower, the 333 meter tall replica of the Eiffel Tower that has been destroyed over and over again in countless Godzilla movies, it was raining. This meant looking out from the 150 meter high observatory was mostly "In this direction, on a clearer day, you could see Tokyo Disney Resort and in this direction, on a clearer day, you could see..."

The rain stopped and the sun came out when we left Tokyo Tower and moved on to the Imperial Palace, which is as you might imagine closed to the public right now. It has a handsome moat though, if you're into moats

We drove around for a while and got caught in traffic jams in some of Tokyo's more famous districts: Ginza, renowned for its high end shopping; Sibuya, renowned for its slightly less high end shopping; and Akihabara, renowned for its decidedly not so high end shopping.

Finally we stopped in Asakusa, home of the Sensoji Temple. The Senso-ji ("ji" means temple by the way) was founded in 628 CE when two fishermen pulled a religious statue out of the Sumida river. Rather than ask why someone would throw a perfectly good statue of the Kannon into the river, they decided to build a temple in its honor. This is probably one of the most visited Buddhist temples in the world, being right in the middle of Tokyo and all.

The building behind me in the picture is the Gokuden where the statue is housed. There are about a dozen other buildings at the site, including a Shinto shrine. Leading up to the Gokuden is a two block long shopping street crowded with little souvenir shops and food stalls. I was tempted to blow the budget many times, but managed to hold onto most of my yen when I discovered just about everything for sale here was made in China.

The bus tour ended and we went back to the hotel via several more famous shopping districts. There ARE other things to do in Tokyo besides shop, I swear it, and I'll write about those just as soon as I finish shopping for a cell phone with a camera in Shinjuku.