Bansai Tokyo Part 2

Our final few days in Tokyo were spent seeing a few final site before we had to go back to Okinawa. We visited the Buddhist Sensoji Temple. Built over 1000 years ago, it is the oldest oldest and one of the most significant shrines in Tokyo. The main building itself was under renovation so it had scaffoldings all over it but this one of the toriis leading up to the shrine.

Near the shrine there was a little park that the boys got to run around at. There was a Japanese preschool there at the same time and Coryn wasted no time making new friends. This girl ran up to him as soon as we arrived so She & Him had a great time exploring, all the while with Coryn trying to talk to her in English and her just looking at him like, "I have no idea what you're saying, but who cares, I'm having fun."

We also made sure to visit the Imperial Gardens on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Coryn really wanted to met the emperor and was a little sad that he wasn't able to. We did get to hear some of the Imperial Guards making a lot of noise while they were practising Kendo with their bamboo swords. I would kind of liken this area to Tokyo's version of Central Park and it is an expanse of green surrounded by extensive urban expansion.

No trip to Tokyo would be complete without a visit to the Tokyo Tower, and while we didn't take the time to go up to the top we did stop by since we were in the neighborhood. Modeled after the Eiffel Tower in Paris, this is the main broadcast tower for television and radio in the city. It is over 1,000 feet tall and visible from several points around town.

In the same neighborhood as the tower we came across the Zojoji Temple, another Buddhist shrine. I liked the juxtaposition of the traditional shrine with the modern broadcast tower in the background. In a place as old as Tokyo you find several examples of an ancient something or other that has survived into modern times and surrounded by the present.

We had a great time in Tokyo and when the time came to return back to Okinawa we made it on to the return leg of the free flight without any trouble and were back home in time for lunch just a few hours shy of a week since we first took off. This meant that I had a whole weekend to recover from our vacation before I had to head back to work.