Good Morning Tokyo! Rosie has a full itinerary today and cant wait to get out on the road and see the sights. Hold on whats that noise….’Rain’, said The Operator, it was raining alright, torrential vertical rain! The weather forecast said it was going to fine up mid morning so we bunked down in a coffee shop two doors down to either
1/ wait till it eased up abit or
2/ wait till 1030 and The Samurai Museum opened, a good indoor activity on a rainy day.
Well, the rain didn’t stop so we walked raincoat and umbrella clad to the Samurai Museum just down the road hoping to get on the first tour of the day. We did, we were lucky though, alot of other people me thinks had the same rainy day idea.
The Samurai Museum is small and each batch of tour groups left every 15mins with a guide who explained the exhibits. The exhibits themselves were mainly replica samurai battle armor suits and some weapons such as swords and muskets.
The samurai were members of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan. They started out as provincial warriors and aligned in the 12th century with the countries first military dictatorship, the Shogunate. The samurai were servants of the fuedal lords that were aligned with the shogun. Backing up the power of the shogun and giving him power over the Emporer. As high ranking servants of the lords and shogun, the samurai dominated Japanese Government and society until the Meij Restoration in 1868 when the feudal system was abolished and complete power returned to the Emperor.
The battle armor was all unique and represented the warrior, their family and feudal house. The Samurai fought with swords and bow and arrow, often from horseback. These suits were incredibly heavy even though they were made to be light weight. The face plates and helmets were designed to instill fear into their opponent as well as offer protection.
At the end of the tour The Operator became a fearsome Samurai warrior defending his Rosie…..yeah right, Rosie loves dress up and just loved that red kimono…..The Operator hates dress up and just suffered through it.
It was still raining, but the sky was getting lighter, time to go for lunch and then hit the tourist trail for the afternoon. Rosie got an excellent recommendation of a fab neighbourhood Tonkatsu restaurant from the guy in the Samurai Museum so off we went.
Tonkatsu is a breaded deep fried pork chop and a Tokyo speacialty…this restaurant seems to have been here for millenia so they must have perfected it! They had, the meat was so tender with perfect thick crunchy crumbs, it is served with miso soup and finely shredded cabbage which you dress to how you like it and a bowl of rice. Delicious.
Fortified, with only a fine mist of rain that was slowly evaporating we ventured forth to the Imperial Palace, to explore the grounds.
The Palace still is the Palace for the Emporer today, the guided tours through the palace are few and far between and are booked months in advance. The grounds are huge and park like if not a little bare and unimpressive for Japan. To its credit, not a blade of grass is out of place and every falling leaf is nearly immediately picked up.
The moats and fortifications are fabulous and so impressive and impenetrable looking, not surprising seeing it was the largest fortress in the world in its heydey.
This was the view though that Rosie had come to see along with everyone else in Tokyo, the iconic view of a tiny corner of the palace watchtower overlooking the Niju-bashi Bridge and moat.
On the other side of the bridge, modern Tokyo reigns supreme. The old world and the new world sit hand in hand and side by side so perfectly here.
Heading home, at our back door was this cute little inner shrine in amongst all the hustle and bustle. Mossy and green with age, untouched by the city that has grown around it is Inari-Kio, a quiet little sanctuary in a modern world.
Dinner time was yakitori skewers of chicken skin, which were heavenly fatty bliss, chicken gizzard and beef cheek. With a round of gyoza and stir fried sprouts, a house specialty, which were delicious!
Tomorrow we hope to get to the sights we didn’t manage today, should be perfect, no rain at all is forecast.
