Two Malaysian ladies (sisters) planned to visit Japan before the big, terrible earthquake in Tohoku in March, and then Fukushima nuclear disaster, they had to cancel the trip to Japan that time. But they had wanted to come and visit Japan for about 20 years. Finally they could come and see Japan this summer. They wanted to go sightseeing as much as they could, and also shopping.
I was a tour guide for them on the second day in Tokyo, which was September 2nd. Around those days a typhoon was approaching and I worried and thought over where to go. But luckily the weather wasn’t so bad that day ; cloudy.
I met them at their hotel which was at the back of Shinjuku Chuo Park at 10am. Crossing the park they enjoyed taking many photos of signboards in the park, and tall buildings, some of which are quite unique.
First I took them to the observatory of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which is 45th floor, and you can see the view of Tokyo. Even though the weather wasn’t so good, we could see and check such as Tokyo Tower, the Tokyo Sky Tree, Meiji Shrine area etc., but not Mt. Fuji which the ladies wanted to see very much, unfortunately. It took about two hours to get to the Station after all. It was about 12 noon.
On the way to Asakusa, we saw a sumo wrestler who was wearing Yukata and topknot. The ladies were excited and asked him to take photos. How happy they were with the sumo wrestler!
We had lunch at Asakusa. As the next day they were going to Tsukiji where they can eat good sushi, I recommended to have soba, buckwheat noodle, which we enjoyed with tempura (shrimp). They weren’t interested in temples and shrines so much, because they went some already in Kyoto and Nara before Tokyo. They spent much time to buy bags and rice crackers, and just to look round the Nakamise street.
Then we moved to the boat station. I felt a bit released that boats were running, you know, there was a typhoon approaching to Japan. We could safely arrive to the Hama-rikyu Gardens which used to belong to the Tokugawa Shogun in Edo Era, with a little shower. There, one of the ladies had a pain in her leg and seemed very tired. So we paced down and rested on a bench for a while. It was almost four o’clock.
At the very last time, they wanted to go to Ueno area. What they would like to do was shopping, in reasonable price. Ameyoko was a nice place to go, and they seemed to have fun to look around and do more shopping. Only I could show them at Ueno was the Ameyoko street. Because it was nearly 5:30, and we were all tired, walking around so much in the hot and humid weather (typhoon!).
Amazing to me, they bought 42 umbrellas totally by then, they said. They had nice time (I hope) to see some parts of Tokyo/Japan and did a lot of shopping!!
A.A