The Imperial Palace in Tokyo is home to the royal family, and surrounded by beautiful parkland. To get in to see the palace on the days it’s open, you have to arrive well before 9.30 (when the tour starts). Once the allowed number of people have turned up – that’s it, no more can go.
But the park itself is beautiful:
The palace itself is on the grounds of the ruins of the old Edo castle, the seat of the Tokugawa shogun who ruled Japan from 1603 until 1867. It;s surrounded by a moat and massive high walls, which slope to give better defence capabilities.
We walked through the gardens and ended up on the far side of the gardens and left in search of coffee. We found what looked like a ligthhouse, which turned out to be the Lighthouse at Kudan-Sakaue, also known as Takatōrō Jōtōmyōdai. And indeed it is a lighthouse – even though the nearest sea is several kilometres away. And that’s because it was not originally built as a lighthouse, but was built as a lantern for the nearby Yasukunu Shrine.
We were in Chiyoda, which seemed to be more of an office area and cafes were few and far between. It turns out Chiyoda is an economic powerhouse, home to the headquarters of 19 Fortune 500 companies; the source of roughly 10% of the combined revenue of all Japanese companies! But not coffee, it seems.
Eventually we did find coffee and finally found ourselves in the entertainment, business and shopping hub of Shinjuku. It includes a maze of characterful shopping streets
