If you only have one day to do station hopping in Tokyo Yamanote Line, you have to set your priorities. First let me tell you how it went for us.
TOKYO STATION
We started the morning in Tokyo Station. We walked to Hibiya Dori from the station to go check out the Imperial Palace Gardens. It was a cold rainy day early April in Tokyo that time so the 1 mile walk was no joke and 1 mile is just to the gates. The Imperial Palace Gardens is open to the public for free. We really really wanted to go there but after we got to the gates and it is still raining hard, with the garden looking like it's another mile or more from the gates, we decided to just take a picture of the bridge to the entrance and head back to the station before the rain starts to pour even harder. It was already half-past ten in the morning too when we get to Hibiya Dori so we didn't want to burn the whole morning in just one place. |
| Holding up a stuffed penguin we won from a crane game. |
Akihabara, as most of you guys probably know, is the electronics mecca of Tokyo. It is also the place where Otakus were born. Most of the movies that has modern futuristic electric cities based their cities design in Akihabara. The best time to see Akihabara is at night when all the neon lights are lit up. Unfortunately for us, we only saw it in the day but it was still a great experience.
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| Ishimaru, Laox and Onoden are some of the more popular shops in Akihabara. |
We wanted to try eating at a Maid Cafe in Akihabara but time just would not allow. Still, us being able to walking around seeing a number of girls dressed as maids, playing in an arcade full of Otakus, and being able to do some shopping was an enough experience to remember for an hour and a half we spent in Akihabara.
UENO STATION
Ueno Park is one of the most popular spots in Tokyo for Hanami or Cherry Blossom Viewing. We were there the second week of April, which usually is not a bad time for Hanami. That year however, there was a number of storm that went through Tokyo so it blew away most of the cherry blossoms. You can still see a good amount of cherry blossoms on the picture below but in the peak of cherry blossom season, those trees would have had ten times more cherry blossoms. |
| Buildings of Kabukicho |
Shinjuku is mostly known because of Kabukicho which was dubbed as the "Sleepless Town". It is also the most popular red-light district in Tokyo. This is again one of those places best seen at night when the neon lights are lit up but still not boring to walk around in the early afternoon.
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| Green Peas Pachinko: popular Shinjuku landmark |
SHIBUYA STATION
We got here late in the afternoon, it started raining pretty bad again, and fatigue is starting to get into us. When we got here, we completely forgot the main reason we stopped in this station. All we remembered is that this is another well-known place in Tokyo so we should just walk around the station and check what interesting stuff we could find. When we went back in the station and already in a train, that's when it struck us that we completely forgot to look for the Hachiko statue in this station. This stop was nothing special for us since we forgot to look for the popular dog's statue.
HAMAMATSUCHO STATION
We stopped at this station a couple of times before this day because a bus tour we took originates from this station and this is the station nearest to Odaiba(more on those on future posts). The main reason we came back is the World Trade Center Observatory, also called Seaside Top, which is the building next door of the station. We were glad that we came here since this is probably the place where we get the best view of the Tokyo Tower.
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| View of Tokyo Tower from Seaside Top: The World Trade Center Observatory |