Day 12 - 08/01/1998: At the Emperor's Gate: We caught an early Shinkansen in to Tokyo and just from what I saw from the Shinkansen I could see that it's a huge city! Not only that, the city seems to have a different look to it than other places in Japan and it is very concrete hardly a tree anywhere (although remember this was winter and many trees in Japan are deciduous).
From the Tokyo station we caught a bus which goes on a circuit of a number of tourist spots with running commentary in (in Japanese), these buses are called "Hato Basu" ("Hato" = pigeon)1. You can get off at any stop go and have a look at sights (at your own pace) and go back to the bus stop and another bus will come along on the circuit within 15 minutes. It cost 1500yen ($18.75AUD)each (for one day) for the circuit we went on, but there are a number of circuits to chose from at varying prices.2
The first stop on the circuit was the emperors place. We could only get as close as the moat which you can see in the photo above. Apparently there are only two days in the year when you can actually get into the grounds.3
After having a look around the park outside the palace we got back on the circuit bus. The next stop was the bus depot which and we decided to get of and have lunch at the bus company's canteen, it was cheep! Katsu Kare (a crumbed pork cutlet, curry and rice, "Katsu" = cutlet4) for only 300yen ($3.75AUD).
