As Tokyo is the largest city in the world! We decided to focus this day on the central Tokyo area. It was another glorious day so it seemed perfect to wander around the Imperial Palace and East Gardens.
After a short walk around the baseball stadium we took the subway line a couple of stops to Hanzomon and walked along the perimeter of the grounds to the park entrance hoping to find a bakery or cafe for lunch but as we didn't find anything and we were hungry hippos we detoured to a local cafe to satisfy our craving.
After returning to the entrance we proceeded through the gate and into the East Gardens. We found out that the Imperial Palace itself is mostly out of bounds with the exception of two tours daily around a small section of the outer perimeter and given the new emperor had been sworn in just the day before we weren't sure these would be happening. The gardens are well kept and contained by a moat separating it from the inner palace and the city, we spent an hour or so wondering around the various levels. It provided great city scape views, reminding me of good times in Central Park New York (although it's much small).
We exited the park through the Ōte-mon Gate on the East side. It was pretty clear that was the entrance most people use by the queue, we didn't have any queue on the North gate (Kita-hanebashi-mon). We headed in the direction of Ginza to check out the famous shopping district, not that we could afford to spend our money there with its Tiffany's, Louis Vuittons etc...
It's a bit like Oxford St or 5th Avenue in New York but the sheer size and number of department stores is over whelming, you could easily spend days and thousands of ¥ here if you're a shopaholic BUT we are not.... so we headed to where we probably fit in better... Yup you've guess it the FISH market. The Tsukiji fish market (outer) to be exact and although the inner market has moved, it still has it's charm for tourists and locals a like by providing fish, crabs, lobsters and a variety of street food. We decided to try the local tuna as this market was once famous for it's tuna auctions so we found a stall preparing the tuna and making delicious looking sushi right in front of us. It was extremely fresh and definitely delicious although a touch pricey we got 4 pieces for about £7 but still reasonable compared with England.
After this we retraced our steps to Ginza and got on the subway line picking up a 72 hour subway pass that's available to tourists for just over £10, if you show your passport at one of the various resellers including a few major subway stations.
In the early evening it was time for us to head over to Tokyo Bay area to do MariCAR, not in anyway related to Nintendo other than it is called MariCAR which used to be called MariKAR and allowed people to dress up as characters from Super Mario.... but as I said not in anyway related to Nintendo or indeed Super Mario.
It was a little walk from Shin-Kiba station through an industrial park that was reasonably quiet but felt safe enough and as we turned the final corner we saw the go karts, my excitement levels rising significantly at this point. After a short registration process we were told to go upstairs to get ready which involved choosing the costumes (unfortunately no Mario characters anymore after the lawsuit a couple of years ago) but luckily Disney Kart doesn't exist yet so I found a Woody costume (Toy Story is actually one of my favourite films) and Laura got a Sully (of Monster's Inc fame).
The staff were reasonable young and seemed quite relaxed about talking us through the dos and don't, how to drive the kart and safety instructions (of which there weren't many). We were given a pair of plastic glasses but if you have your own from cycling or such I would recommend it as the glare on the ones we had in the dark made it hard to see the hand signals from the lead driver.
Nao was leading our group of 6 and Ryan was tailing to ensure we all stayed together, our group started off a little nervously as go karting on the road is definitely a new one for me! The instructors were great though and starting in the bay area there wasn't much traffic allowing us to get used to the karts. We were told by friends (Jill and Dave), that had done it a few days earlier, to get the front seats and you won't need a camera as the lead driver takes a lot of photos this was a great tip!
We weaved through the streets of Tokyo for around 3 hours covering all the major sights including Rainbow Bridge, Shinjuku, Shibuya + Crossing, Harijuku, Skytower, Tokyo Gate Bridge and many more.. We stopped at a Telecom building and had a break from the Karts towards the end. We took a lift up and got an incredible view of the Tokyo skyline (included in the price) this was an unexpected surprise.
Overall I thought the tour was well worth the price (around £80 including £5 insurance for the kart) it's a once in a lifetime chance to explore Tokyo in a completely different way and I would highly recommend doing it around sunset as we got fantastic views on the Rainbow Bridge.
Overall I thought the tour was well worth the price (around £80 including £5 insurance for the kart) it's a once in a lifetime chance to explore Tokyo in a completely different way and I would highly recommend doing it around sunset as we got fantastic views on the Rainbow Bridge.
We were out Karting from about 6:15pm to 9pm including a 15 min stop off for the view and this was plenty of time and we covered so much distance also the traffic was general quiet and respectful of the karts (occasionally a car would sandwich the group but it felt safe, although a helmet wouldn't go a miss).
We headed back to Shibuya for food as we were starving by now and had a Yakisoba meal with Gyozas from one of the first restaurants we found as we were both flagging by this point food was okay nothing to write home about.
