Ireland day 1334. Saturday 24 May 2025- Tokyo 1

Today’s summary	After a 7 am breakfast, walked over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building to visit the viewing platforms on the 45th floor on both the North and South towers. Then walked down to Meiji Jingu shrine and gardens. Had a look at the wall of Sake barrels and the Iris beds (not fully in flower yet). Then walked to Shibuya to watch the iconic crossing from Starbucks. Took ourselves on a walking tour round the area then caught a Fukutoshin tube line back to Shinjuku. Finished off the evening with onsen and dinner at the Thermae-Yu spa
Today’s weather	Overcast and mild most of the day but rain in the evening. Light north easterly wind. Appx 20c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Shinjuku and Shibuya

Commentary

Most people go on holiday to relax but for some reason, our holidays never seem to turn out like that. So, true to form, we were up early today and down at breakfast at 7am, ready to start our day’s explorations straight afterwards.

Our first port of call was the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, which is about half an hour’s walk from our hotel. There are two towers, North and South, and there are viewing galleries on the 45 floors of both, which are open to the public, and which are free. As a side-note, I must say how nice it is to be in a country where everything hasn’t been outsourced to a third party company determined to push up prices and drive down costs in the interests of maximising profits.

The galleries were very civilised – there was even a pianist in one – so we lingered over the vertiginous view, and got a drink in the café. It was quite sobering to think that from this lofty perch we could see most of the whole of this city of 30 million inhabitants. that’s roughly five times the population of Ireland, just visible from the one spot.

We eventually left the towers and walked south to reach the large park housing the Meiji Jingu shrine, which despite the influx of visitors today was a real oasis of calm in this frenetic city. Whilst there we also had a look at the wall of sake barrels (offered annually by manufacturers across the country to bring luck to their breweries) as well as the inner garden and the Iris beds. One or two flowers were out but the main season doesn’t start until June.

After the gardens, it was only a short-ish further walk down into the adjoining city district of Shibuya. It’s a modern high-rise zone, much like Shinjuku next door, but a bit more up-market. But it is of course most famed for its mad zebra crossing – known as the Shibuya Scramble – and now a destination in its own right with upwards of 2000 people crossing every time the lights change to green – which is every 2 or 3 minutes. We eventually found a suitable viewing point in an overlooking Starbucks (once we had actually managed to find the way in) and paused for a while fascinated by the comings and goings, and pretending to enjoy our peculiar breakfast-tea hot lattes.

Our Dorling Kindersley guidebook suggests a number of short walks around Tokyo’s various districts and we did one yesterday evening, around Shinjuku. We enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot, so for today we plotted out the route of its Shibuya equivalent on my Locus Maps app, and spent an enjoyable hour walking it. Especially interesting was the discovery of a huge guitar shop, where we dropped in to enable Val to pick up a specialist item for one of her friends back in Malahide.

As we were finishing the walk, the first few spots of rain were starting to fall, and my weather app suggested that there was a lot more to come. By this time it was also almost 5pm so we decided to finish our meanderings and to make our way back to our hotel in Shinjuku. The Fukutoshin underground line runs north from Shibuya to the Higashi-Shinjuko station, which is fairly close to our hotel. But being tired and grimy after a day exploring, once we had taken the tube and arrived in Shinjuko, we decided to head a couple of blocks north from the station (once we found our way out – because it’s massive) and away from the hotel, to a nearby onsen and spa – called Thermae-yu.

We spent a very relaxing 90 minutes lounging around in hot water, then, as there was a very nice restaurant in the basement, we decided to get dinner and a couple of beers on-site afterwards. Eventually we were finished by about 9pm, so got changed and paid, and scurried back to our hotel. Fortunately, we managed to avoid the worst of the rain in our quick five minute dash.

That rounded off our day nicely, leaving us feeling like we had very much got value for money from our waking hours. Now we’re starting to think about how we can fill tomorrow equally productively. Bring it on!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The twin towers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. There is a viewing platform on the 45th floor of each tower, and we visited them both	Keeping well away from the windows, given my total lack of a head for heights

The Meiji Jingu shrine. Busy, but its quite big so people are well spaced out and it’s set in huge gardens	Beautiful bonsai trees alongside the path leading to the Iris beds (which need another week or two to come into flower)

The guitar shop. Even to a non-musician like me, it was a fascinating place	Tonight’s relaxation – the Thermae-Yu spa, just five minutes’ walk from here

A view from the 45th floor over the vastness that is Tokyo. Some 30 million people live here – that’s around five times the population of Ireland