Tag: Imperial Palace

Kyoto Day 2-4 (Japan 2017)

Kyoto Day 2-4 (Japan 2017)

We awoke on our first full day in Kyoto with some big plans.  There were quite a few locations we wanted to tick off our boxes in Kyoto and we only had so many days to see them.  We decided to head over to the Imperial Palace as it was supposed to be prime sakura (cherry blossom) viewing.  There is a web site that lists the various locales within Kyoto and the status of the cherry blossoms in that location – ranging from peak viewing to not blossomed.  The Imperial Palace was a short subway ride and walk from our AirBnB.

The Imperial Palace actually sits in the middle of a very large park.  Upon first entering the park, you could see that others had the same idea of checking out the cherry blossoms.  With it still being mid-morning, the lighting was actually quite good for picture-taking and so we did like the other tourists and posted in and around the trees.  We didn’t actually go to the front of the Palace and elected to check out the Shirakumo Shrine, which is located towards the south-eastern portion of the park.

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Tokyo Day 3 & 4 (Japan 2017)

Tokyo Day 3 & 4 (Japan 2017)

After a restful sleep, we awoke and ordered some room service and then decided to head over to the Imperial Palace area along with Tokyo Station and the many things around that area.  The weather was still fairly overcast and rainy, my wife was very smart and brought an umbrella.

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Tokyo Station

We walked around the outer perimeter of the Imperial Palace but didn’t try to go inside.  We started to get hungry and went looking for a snack.

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Imperial Palace

Near Tokyo Station is the KITTE building, which houses a lot of stores as well as restaurants.

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KITTE Building

I had read about it on a web site and since we were right there, we stopped in.  It was still fairly early in the day so they weren’t letting people go up onto higher floors.  So we headed to the basement and walked around where they had little shops of various food items and small trinket type things.  We got some Chicken Karaage from the convenience store.  This is essentially their version of chicken nuggets.  I also had an Onigiri (which became a theme of the trip).  Onigiri are triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed and filled with various items (I ended up trying some that had tuna salad, smoked salmon, fish roe, egg, etc). Continue reading “Tokyo Day 3 & 4 (Japan 2017)” →