Back to Tokyo (Asakusa and Ueno) – Farewell to Japan

The Shinkansen covered the 476 km between Kyoto and Tokyo in around two hours twenty minutes – an average speed of just over 200km/h.

It is an amazing service, with departures every 5 to 10 minutes during peak periods – a bit like London’s tube, except much faster, plus it actually works and is spotlessly clean. On the way we were treated to one last view of Mount Fuji.

Getting from Tokyo Station to our hotel in Asakusa would take us another hour (average speed 7 km/h, including lots of scratching our heads trying to find the right line to take), but we were glad of the effort we made to get there. It is famous as being Tokyo’s most traditional area, with low-rise buildings, restaurants and markets. We arrived in the early evening, checked into our hotel and set off to explore. Asakusa was very different to Shinjuku or central Tokyo, and we liked it a lot. The highlight of the area was the Senso-ji temple – built in 645, and probably the city’s most famous single building. It looked magnificent against the night sky, with one of Tokyo’s best-known modern constructions, the Skytree, standing behind it.

The next day we explored Asakusa some more so that Aki could go souvenir shopping. The street going from the temple’s outer to inner gates was packed with shops, many selling traditional Japanese costumes. It was very busy, but in a pleasant way. Although the shops are mostly now directed at tourists, a shopping area has existed here for several centuries.

In the afternoon we made the trip to Ueno, another interesting suburb of Tokyo. The centre of this district is Ueno Park, which was busy with locals enjoying a Sunday outing or visiting one of the many museums in the area. We enjoyed live music, street food and the Museum of Western Art – maybe a strange choice for western tourists, but it was offering free entry without the long queue for the very popular Tokyo National Museum.

As night fell, we found yet another interesting temple – Bentendo – which sits in large lake covered with lotus plants.

We headed back to Asakusa for our last night in Japan, which we started in a crab restaurant. We drank a bit too much celebrating the end of our trip, and after dinner decided to visit one of the amusement arcades we had seen all over Japan to get rid of some of the loose change we had accumulated over nearly a month. We tried to grab a prize with a claw machine game, knowing full well that it is usually a good way to waste money. Amazingly we managed to liberate this furry friend from his captivity in the arcade and will be taking him back to Europe to present to a newly-arrived great-niece in our family. I hope that one day when she grows up his owner takes him back to Japan and he can relive some of our amazing adventures here.

Well, that’s all for this trip. We have been in Japan for a month, during which we have experienced the huge city of Tokyo, Nikko, Mount Fuji, the Japanese Alps in autumn, the provincial cities of Kanazawa and Hiroshima, magical Miyajima, little-visited Shikoku with its mountains, and the countless temples of Kyoto. We have stayed in some great places, enjoyed meeting the friendly and helpful Japanese people, and had many memorable meals. But Japan is a big place, and it is impossible to see everything in one trip. We will back – next time probably to explore the island of Kyushu in the far south and to catch Kyoto when the autumn colours peak.

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