Monday, April 15
Today we checked out of the Hilton and moved to the Ritz Carlton in Tokyo Midtown area. We will meet our A&K tour guide — the tour will start tomorrow morning. We ate our final breakfast buffet and went out for a cab at around 9:30 AM. The weather today was lovely and sunny after raining overnight. There was a group of 600 people from a cruise ship leaving today also, but it seemed like they were already gone. Yesterday, they were all departing for an outing at about 9:00 AM and people were waiting 30+ minutes to get an elevator. We got lucky and rode up to go down. No trouble today.
Tokyo’s high-rise buildings have elevators with a feature we have not seen before. When you push the button to call the elevator, the signal by elevator car that will come next immediately lights up, so you know where to stand and wait. In our US experience, the signal only lights up when the elevator car arrives, leaving you to guess which one might come next.
We arrived at the Ritz and left our bags since it was too early to check in. The Ritz occupies the top floors of the Tokyo Midtown high-rise building. The hotel lobby is actually on the 45th floor, where we proceeded to ask the concierge for advice on things to do in this area today. He was not helpful and basically directed us to a couple of nearby shopping centers. We would have loved to have gone to the Imperial gardens today, but they are closed on Mondays. Anyway, we got a map and took his advice, walking to Roppongi Hills center (a city within a city!) — boring. There is a National Art Center nearby, but its current exhibition is Turkish treasures — we’ll pass (a Klimt exhibit is opening there later this month).
We saw that there is a large cemetery nearby on the map, called Aoyama, so we checked that out — interesting monuments with wooden planks that almost look like snow skis.
The owner of Hachiko, the famously loyal dog, is buried in here somewhere. There is also a section for foreigners. We decided to return to the hotel, which is adjacent to the Tokyo Midtown shopping mall — kind of like the Time Warner Center in New York City — very nice and modern. We had lunch at Harb’s, a chain restaurant with a lot of cake. We each had a salad, shrimp for Rob and bacon with vegetables for Roy. It was good.
At this point it was after 2:00 PM, the time where our A&K representative was available at the hotel, so we went there to check in and meet her. She is named Mihoko Ino, but goes by Mimi. She is very nice. Our room was ready so we were able to check in — wow, is it nice! The views are unbelievable from the 51st floor!
We thought we might just relax for the remainder of the afternoon, but Rob noticed that the Crown Prince's palace, currently used as an official government guesthouse, was open to the public. We could see the western style building from our window. So at 3:30 PM, we departed and hoofed it to the palace — a thirty-minute walk.
The palace, known as the Akasaka State Guest House, was completed in 1909 and is the only neo-Baroque European style palace in Japan. The basic design had many inspirations, including Versailles, the New Palace in Vienna, Buckingham Palace, and the Louvre. There are also several Japanese motifs included in the European design, which created a fusion of Japanese and Western design elements. As well as serving its original purpose as the home of several Crown Princes, it also served at times as the imperial residence. After World War II, the imperial family transferred ownership of the palace to the Japanese government. A complete restoration was begun in 1969 and then completed in 1974, and it has served as the state guest house since that time.
As it turned out, there was an official guest there, so the building itself was closed for touring, but we enjoyed the walk around the gardens and saw a tree planted by Gerald Ford in 1974 (next to a tree planted by Gorbachev).
We had thought the site was open until 5:00 PM, but it was closing at 4:30 PM, so there was really no time to go inside anyway. We walked back at a more leisurely pace. This area is more upscale than Shinjuku, but it is also less residential with more office buildings. The moon was rising over our hotel building, the Tokyo Midtown Tower.
At 6:00 PM we went to the lobby bar (where someone was smoking!) for a glass of wine. Dinner was back at the mall at an Italian place called Napule. Rob had tagliatelle bolognese, and Roy had pizza margherita with radicchio salads to start. The food was good, but the atmosphere was too over lit. At the table next to us, two ladies were eating steak and talked the whole time we were there as if there was no food on their table. Needless to say, we finished before them. We think they had been there since lunch — very strange.
Tokyo’s high-rise buildings have elevators with a feature we have not seen before. When you push the button to call the elevator, the signal by elevator car that will come next immediately lights up, so you know where to stand and wait. In our US experience, the signal only lights up when the elevator car arrives, leaving you to guess which one might come next.
We arrived at the Ritz and left our bags since it was too early to check in. The Ritz occupies the top floors of the Tokyo Midtown high-rise building. The hotel lobby is actually on the 45th floor, where we proceeded to ask the concierge for advice on things to do in this area today. He was not helpful and basically directed us to a couple of nearby shopping centers. We would have loved to have gone to the Imperial gardens today, but they are closed on Mondays. Anyway, we got a map and took his advice, walking to Roppongi Hills center (a city within a city!) — boring. There is a National Art Center nearby, but its current exhibition is Turkish treasures — we’ll pass (a Klimt exhibit is opening there later this month).
We saw that there is a large cemetery nearby on the map, called Aoyama, so we checked that out — interesting monuments with wooden planks that almost look like snow skis.
The owner of Hachiko, the famously loyal dog, is buried in here somewhere. There is also a section for foreigners. We decided to return to the hotel, which is adjacent to the Tokyo Midtown shopping mall — kind of like the Time Warner Center in New York City — very nice and modern. We had lunch at Harb’s, a chain restaurant with a lot of cake. We each had a salad, shrimp for Rob and bacon with vegetables for Roy. It was good.
At this point it was after 2:00 PM, the time where our A&K representative was available at the hotel, so we went there to check in and meet her. She is named Mihoko Ino, but goes by Mimi. She is very nice. Our room was ready so we were able to check in — wow, is it nice! The views are unbelievable from the 51st floor!
We thought we might just relax for the remainder of the afternoon, but Rob noticed that the Crown Prince's palace, currently used as an official government guesthouse, was open to the public. We could see the western style building from our window. So at 3:30 PM, we departed and hoofed it to the palace — a thirty-minute walk.
The palace, known as the Akasaka State Guest House, was completed in 1909 and is the only neo-Baroque European style palace in Japan. The basic design had many inspirations, including Versailles, the New Palace in Vienna, Buckingham Palace, and the Louvre. There are also several Japanese motifs included in the European design, which created a fusion of Japanese and Western design elements. As well as serving its original purpose as the home of several Crown Princes, it also served at times as the imperial residence. After World War II, the imperial family transferred ownership of the palace to the Japanese government. A complete restoration was begun in 1969 and then completed in 1974, and it has served as the state guest house since that time.
As it turned out, there was an official guest there, so the building itself was closed for touring, but we enjoyed the walk around the gardens and saw a tree planted by Gerald Ford in 1974 (next to a tree planted by Gorbachev).
We had thought the site was open until 5:00 PM, but it was closing at 4:30 PM, so there was really no time to go inside anyway. We walked back at a more leisurely pace. This area is more upscale than Shinjuku, but it is also less residential with more office buildings. The moon was rising over our hotel building, the Tokyo Midtown Tower.
At 6:00 PM we went to the lobby bar (where someone was smoking!) for a glass of wine. Dinner was back at the mall at an Italian place called Napule. Rob had tagliatelle bolognese, and Roy had pizza margherita with radicchio salads to start. The food was good, but the atmosphere was too over lit. At the table next to us, two ladies were eating steak and talked the whole time we were there as if there was no food on their table. Needless to say, we finished before them. We think they had been there since lunch — very strange.
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