Last saturday I made a walk through Tokyo. I carefully planned my trip to make sure that most of it would be through green areas. This way I spend a whole afternoon walking through parks, temple areas and gardens. Although the photos may not show much of this, the feeling was amazing. My view of Tokyo changed from ugly, busy concrete city to a nice, spacious and green one! I indicated my route on the map below.
On this map you can see that the central Tokyo area contains quite some green. If you plan carefully you only have to walk a non-green street twice or thrice. For the rest of the day you only get outside the green when crossing a street to get to the next park.
Just a picture to show some weird architecture. The right building contains a shop for wedding dresses. The left one is a bookstore. The contrast between both buildings is huge, both in style and in color.
View on Roppongi
The stairs up to the Akasaka Sanno Hi-e shrine are covered with red torii.
The National Diet Building (Kokkai-gijidoo) is the place in which both the houses of the Diet of Japan are held (House of Representatives and House of Councillors)
View from the west of the Emperial Palace
Marunouchi & Ootemachi skyline from the Emperial Palace
Flower of a magnolia tree in the Emperial East Garden
Pine tree on one of the many walls in the Emperial East Garden
I have rarely seen so many tour busses together. There were over 30! You see only 8 here, but these row were 2 or three busses wide and after the huge torii there was another bus-parking spot. If there are so many tour busses, there must be a very dull attraction, I thought. I was so right... I only had expected a more commercialized attraction. (It was the Yasukuni Shrine by the way) The figure right in the middle on the horizon is a statue by the way, I managed to hide the pedestal behind the foreground ;-)