Tokyo, day 2, part 1

Despite an early night, sleep wasn't great and so we were awake early!

Breakfast of muesli and a Japanese omelette along with a bacon joint and sausage was gratefully received before we headed out at 8am for our first tour.

We walked the 15 minutes to Shinjuku station to meet our tour at 8.20. we arrived at the station and eventually managed to get the guides to understand that we wanted to join the tour early!

The first stop, once we started the tour, was at the Imperial palace. We stopped and walked past a Shogun on a horse before seeing the double bridge in front on the main palace grounds. We couldn't go into the palace itself as it is only open for a couple of days per year.

On returning to the bus we drove to the Tokyo tower. This is an old TV transmission tower which resembles the Blackpool tower but painted red. The tour included a trip up to the observation deck of the 330m high tower although the deck itself was 'only' about 150m high. The views of Tokyo were amazing and we were really lucky to be able to see Mount Fuji, which is only usually visible on a few days per month.Read more