| An entrance to the Tokyo Station |
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| This is the hotel in Tokyo I stayed in.
A green vertical sign reads “Center Hotel Tokyo” in Japanese, but
there is no English sign elsewhere. Perhaps that is in order to discourage
people who don’t speak Japanese from staying in it. Anyway, that
is a nice, modern hotel located just 5 minutes from the Tokyo Station, and 10
minutes from Ginza. |
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An entrance to Hibiya subway station in
downtown Tokyo. Nothing special here. Just pay attention that the text is
written in kanji, hiragana, for some illiterate Japanese who
cannot read kanji, and English, for those unlucky foreigners that
cannot read neither.
Most of the subway, bus, and railway stations have English signs that
indicate their name. However, all ticket vending machines and the
personnel understand only Japanese. |
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Shibuya Station entrance in
Tokyo. Shibuya, as tourist guides define it, is "a bustling,
youth-oriented shopping district of Tokyo", which indeed it
is. |
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This is the famous bronze statue of Hachiko, the
dog,
at Shibuya station. The legend says that the dog waited for his master for
10 years, unaware that the master wasn't coming anymore. For his loyalty, Hachiko
was rewarded with the statue. |
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This is one of hundreds of McDonald's
restaurants in Tokyo. I just find it funny how it’s being pronounced in
Japanese: "makudonarudo". |
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A giant panda at the entrance to the Ueno
station in Tokyo. The Japanese text reads “jaianto panda”. |
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The Imperial Palace in the center of Tokyo,
which is the home of the current Japan's Emperor and imperial family. |
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An avenue in the Marunouchi district of Tokyo.
The Tokyo Tower is seen; it resembles Eiffel Tower in Paris, but in fact
it is made
of much less steel. |
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The famous Kabuki-za theater in Ginza, Tokyo. |
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Mitsukoshi department store in Ginza. |
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Harajuku district, Tokyo. This avenue
is called Omotesando. Not
far is the Meiji-jingu Shrine built in memory of Emperor Meiji,
under whom Japan ended its isolation from the outside world. |
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The same as the previous one |
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Shinkansen, or
bullet train as it’s known in English. There are three Shinkansen types: “Kodama” – the slowest,
that makes all the stops, “Hikari” - that makes only a few
stops, and “Nozomi”, the fastest, that makes 513 km between Tokyo and Kyoto in
less than 2.5 hours. This is “Kodama” Shinkansen that took me from Mishima to Tokyo. |
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A rather gloomy view of suburban Tokyo as it’s seen
from Shinkansen. If I’m not mistaken, Tokyo is the largest city on
this planet, with some 27 million people living in it. |
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Fueling a car is done a little bit different in
Japan. Notice two schoolgirls in the uniform. It looks like everybody is
wearing the uniform in Japan: from schoolgirls to office workers. |
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Hiroshima Station. Hiroshima is
a rather unattractive city, which seems to have the only tourist attraction -
The A-Bomb Dome and Peace Memorial Park. |
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Nice ancient Hiroshima castle. |
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This structure was preserved, when the
city was rebuilt after the atomic explosion, to become the memorial. |
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Nara |
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Nara station. Nara is Japan's
first capital, and considered to be the number two tourist attraction
after Kyoto. |
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Places to visit in Nara.
Quite surprisingly, I found Nara to be
one of the most "tourist friendly" place in Japan. A lot of
signs in English, many English-speaking people, etc. And the number of
foreigners in Nara was unlike anywhere else I visited.
In
general, I got an impression that there are very few foreign tourists in
Japan comparing to Europe and the US. Back at home, I looked at some
statistics and saw that tourism brings only $3.43bil to the Japanese
economy, whereas it brings $74.5bil to the US, and $31.7bil to
France.
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Todai-ji
Buddhist temple. It is the largest wooden structure in the world, and the
Great Buddha inside it is one of the largest statues in the world. |
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A Buddhist monk standing on the street in Nara. |
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