Japan 2023

February 16th, 2023

This morn­ing I woke up before sun­rise and looked out of our hotel win­dow around 6:20:

With the fan­tas­tic weath­er, I actu­al­ly want­ed to go up to the roof ter­race of our hotel to take more pic­tures (and pos­si­bly start my drone). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ter­race was still locked, so I went back to our apart­ment with­out hav­ing achieved any­thing. After break­fast, we planned a trip to Gyoen Park. On the way there, how­ev­er, we first enjoyed a decent cof­fee with a saku­ra donut at a Starbucks.

Gyoen Park

Locat­ed in the Shin­juku dis­trict, Gyoen Park orig­i­nal­ly belonged to Prince Naitō Kiy­onari dur­ing the Edo peri­od (1608- 1868), who was a retain­er of the first shogun Toku­gawa. Dur­ing the Mei­ji peri­od (1868- 1912), the park was used for agri­cul­tur­al exper­i­ments and was con­vert­ed into an impe­r­i­al gar­den as late as 1906. Final­ly, it was opened to the pub­lic in 1949. Gyoen Park was very beau­ti­ful, even now in winter.

By the way, the rock­et-shaped sky­scraper in the back­ground is the Doco­mo Tow­er. Doco­mo is the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in Japan - sim­i­lar to our Telekom.

Here, some cher­ry trees were already blos­som­ing as well, and the trees were sur­round­ed by peo­ple tak­ing pic­tures. The Japan­ese cher­ry blos­som (jap. 桜 saku­ra) is one of the most impor­tant sym­bols of Japan­ese cul­ture. It rep­re­sents beau­ty, depar­ture and tran­sience (mono no aware). The time of the cher­ry blos­som marks a high­light in the Japan­ese cal­en­dar and is the begin­ning of the spring. Here are some impres­sions of the first cher­ry blos­som from Gyoen Park.

Gyoen Park, which con­tains a series of con­nect­ed ponds in its val­ley, con­sists of parks of three main styles that blend into each oth­er har­mo­nious­ly: a Japan­ese gar­den on the south­west side, the Eng­lish park with large open spaces in the mid­dle, and a French gar­den with mul­ti­ple rows of plane trees and flower bor­ders at the east­ern end. Here are some more pho­to impres­sions from the park.

Shinjuku

Since we were already in Shin­juku, we strolled after the vis­it of the park a lit­tle bit through the city cen­ter. Shin­juku is Tokyo’s famous enter­tain­ment and shop­ping dis­trict, a mec­ca for shop­ping, din­ing and relax­ation. Known for its sky­scrap­ers, Shin­juku City Hall, the red light dis­trict of Kabu­ki­cho, the Gold­en Gai bar dis­trict and Omoide Yoko­cho street, it is a pop­u­lar neigh­bor­hood to explore Tokyo by day and by night. Vivid clubs and karaōke bars in neon-lit east­ern Tokyo and exclu­sive hotel bars and restau­rants in the Sky­scraper Dis­trict invite you to Shinjuku.

Shin­juku is so to speak the Man­hat­tan of Tokyo. Shin­juku Sta­tion is rec­og­nized as the busiest trans­porta­tion hub in the world. When it was reg­is­tered in the Guin­ness Book of Records in 2007, an aver­age of 3.64 mil­lion pas­sen­gers used Shin­juku Sta­tion every day.

In the mid­dle of Kabu­ki­cho, a large Godzil­la head tow­ers over the sky­scrap­ers. It is locat­ed on Godzil­la Road at the Grac­ery Hotel.

On the way back, we made a short stop at Ochan­o­mizu Sta­tion. On a near­by bridge across the Kan­da Riv­er, there is a view of the Aki­habara dis­trict with three dif­fer­ent train lines (Chuo line, Marunouchi line and Chuo-Sobu line) that is very pop­u­lar for train spotters.

In the pic­ture below, all the trains can be seen at the same time. I must admit, how­ev­er, that I did not have the patience to wait for the moment when all the trains were actu­al­ly there at the same time, instead Pho­to­shop helped with this shot😉. This was a very nice motif in the sun­ny weather.

We went up there with the exter­nal glass ele­va­tor from the 3rd to the 45th floor, the entrance was free. The obser­va­tion deck is locat­ed at a height of 150m and is com­plete­ly glazed. The tow­er is an insid­er tip among pho­tog­ra­phers. From here you have a fan­tas­tic view of the set­ting sun over Tokyo with the SkyTree. In good vis­i­bil­i­ty, Mount Fuji is also vis­i­ble in the dis­tance. Despite a mod­er­ate cloud cov­er this time at least its sum­mit was vis­i­ble at times (first pic­ture below).

We stayed there for a long time and enjoyed the sun­set very much. Below I present some pic­tures from there.