Tokyo Diary - Day 3a - Japanese Imperial Palace Grounds

After such a long day yesterday

I woke early for some reason and after chatting with my dear wife and the office for a while over the internet, I noticed it was 6am so I went and knocked on Geoff’s door.

He was awake and so after showering and getting dressed we decided we would go visit the Imperial Palace grounds and from there, depending on the time left, decide what else we wanted to do.

Our first order of business was to figure out how to get to the Imperial Palace grounds. According to our map the Tokyo Train Station was only a few long blocks from the Imperial Palace and one of the buses near the hotel would take us right to the station. We found the bus stop and waited for the bus and when the right one came along we paid our 200 Yen and hopped aboard, ready for our first full day of adventure. The bus took us to the Tokyo train station.

The Tokyo Station is the 2nd largest station in Tokyo, having 3 distinct levels of track servicing different train lines. The main level consists serves 20 train tracks with 10 platforms and is raised above street level. Five stories below ground level to the west of the station are 4 more tracks serving other train lines. Four more tracks of another train line are a couple hundred meters south of the main station and 4 stories below ground. All the lines are connected by an extensive system of underground passageways with moving sidewalks and escalators.

After checking out the station Geoff and I headed down around to the other side of the station and walked the 3 blocks to the entrance of the Japanese Imperial Palace Grounds, or K?kyo. The Japanese Imperial Palace is the residence of the Emperor of Japan. It was destroyed during the Second World War by bombing, but was rebuilt in the same style in 1968. The palace is usually off-limits to the public, although the inner palace is open to the public two days each year, on the Emperor’s birthday and on January 2, the New Year.

There are large rock walls with moats surrounding most of the grounds. We walked around the grounds and spent quite a bit of time in the East Gardens.

The building of the garden adjacent to the Imperial Residence began in 1961 as a part of the construction of the Imperial Palace complex in accordance with the cabinet decision of 29 January 1960. The 210,000 square meter garden was completed in September 1968, and has been open to the public since 1 October of the same year, except when it is used for court functions. The Toukagakudo (Imperial Concert Hall) and Sannomaru Shozokan (Museum of the Imperial Collections), as well as buildings housing the Imperial Household Agency’s Music, Archives and Mausolea departments, are located within this garden.

The Nijubashi Bridge that leads to the Imperial Palace was quite beautiful. The moats and stone walls are incredible. We walked around quite a bit and decided to head over to the gardens

The donjon, or tower, of Edo Castle is said to have been the tallest in Japan. The artist’s rendition on the right was created by taking a photograph of the stone base and then superimposing a photo of a plastic model of Edo Castle to give an idea of how large it actually was. The scale can be measured by the size from the people who are walking up the ramp on the right side of the stone base. In 1657, only 19 years after the tower was completed, a lightning strike started a fire which destroyed the tower.

Photos:

• Tokyo
• Japanese Imperial Palace
• Japanese Imperial Grounds

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