Today we had a guide for the whole day to show us around Tokyo. It’s such a big city though, that I think you would need at least four days to really get a good feel for it, so we have only just scraped the surface.

What we did see agreed with the guide books, it absolutely is a city of contradictions.

You visit an incredible modern building and find a tiny portable Shinto shrine underneath. You visit an area full of skyscrapers and there’s a peaceful forest in the middle of it and almost everywhere, minimalist beauty. The shop windows, the food halls the restaurants, everywhere seems to have an elegant simplicity. No brash displays, no marketing messages leaping out at you just calmness and serenity….

…….Until you turn the corner and cross the road….

Shibuya Crossing is the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing at a time! Today was Sunday, it was pouring down with rain and it was a national holiday so it was unusually quiet but you can see what it’s like (Piccadilly circus and Time square rolled into one)

And I have no idea what was going on here but it appeared that a small number of teenage girls had broken out of their detention centre, hijacked a bus and decided to attack the city by singing at it very loudly!

Unfortunately, we didn’t pick the best day for sightseeing. It started off raining for the first few hours…..and then it turned into a torrential downpour.

You would imagine that with all the rain we get in the UK we would know a thing or two about umbrellas but let me tell you, we know nothing.

It must rain hard and often in Tokyo because the Japanese have turned umbrella management into an art. To start with, if you get caught out in the rain without an umbrella, you just find the nearest umbrella vending machine and for a couple of quid, it will dispense to you an umbrella.

When you want to go into a store, you must first put your umbrella into the umbrella dryer to remove the excess water. You then insert it into a hole in the umbrella machine and it gets wrapped in a plastic cover so you can then enter the store with it without dripping on the unfeasibly clean floors. Some stores even provide an umbrella wrapping service at the door for you.

The rare establishments without this facility provide a rack into which you can place your umbrella safely until you return.

At the museum we visited, they have lockable umbrella racks that slide out from the walls when it rains where you can securely leave your two pound umbrella without fear of it being taken accidentally by someone else (for it would never be stolen in Japan).

And, just in case it starts to rain during your visit and the vending machine is empty, they have a selection of umbrellas that you may borrow to visit their garden.

Japan has cracked every single umbrella problem leaving the UK trailing far behind in its wake. Another opportunity missed. Shame on us,

Our tour started bright and early and our guide, Maki, started by putting together our action plan.

Our first stop was the Imperial palace. Actually, it was a visit to the gardens as, for security, the palace isn’t even depicted on the map of the grounds. It’s a bit silly as it’s surrounded by skyscrapers now and so its whereabouts are known to anyone residing above the fifth floor.

It would have been better had the sun been shining but, as you can see, it’s still a beautiful place even from under an umbrella.

We then travelled to the Nihonbashi area as the guide wanted to show us the Harrods of Tokyo (The Mitsukoshi store) and outside we found ourselves at a portable shrine.

Every small neighbourhood has one of these and on the day of the Shinto Kanda Jinja festival they stick a very long pole through each side of the shrine (the gold thing in the above picture) and one hundred locals carry the shrine throughout the area, 25 per corner). It is so heavy and travels so far that each of these shrines need five teams of people, so that’s five hundred people. In the local area there are 100 of these portable shrines, each with 500 people so that’s 50,000 people walking through the streets on the day of the festival carrying portable shrines!

Each shrine contains the spirits of the gods and as they walk the spirits sprinkle good fortune throughout the streets so, with so many shrines, it must be an incredibly lucky area. Probably full of lottery winners.

We requested something typically Japanese for lunch so Maki took us to an eel restaurant. (Yes, you read that correctly) No, it’s not run by eels, nor are little eel waiters sliding around serving cocktails, it’s ‘just’ a little restaurant serving a fish called Anago and is supposedly incredibly healthy. You can read the menu for yourself. It was actually really good and you had to eat and add seasoning in a certain order, culminating with combining the last mouthfuls with a broth to make a soup. Like many things were discovering in Japan it’s odd but delicious.

After lunch it was a visit to the Nezu museum which was a fabulous building in an incredible Japanese garden which, to be honest, we enjoyed more than the exhibits. They were interesting, very delicate, simple and stylised but not particularly to our taste. Maybe we’re just biased towards European art.

So I think I’ve taken up enough of your time already. I know I promised toilet roulette but I’m going to save it until tomorrow and, instead, show you what I think could become a regular feature…..

‘Weird things we saw in Japan today’

Coming tomorrow…Japanese toilet roulette – at last!

23:45 7th May 2023 – Park Hotel, Tokyo