It was a little overcast this morning it still nice and warm so we started the day by going back to the Senso-ji Temple area as this is very different during the day, we went into a few of the temples and stood watching the faithful waft incense smoke over their faces, for a nation that seems to be obsessed with wearing face masks plunging your face into a load of smoke seems very strange. After we had walked round all the temples and quite a few of the stalls we went to the metro station to head over to the imperial palace, unfortunately you can’t go in as it is still lived in by the royal family, but you can walk round the East Gardens. This is actually a relatively new creation which opened to the public in 1968 it is a really big area covering 21,000 square metres it encompasses a number of buildings and walls from the imperial palace grounds, including three guardhouses, one of which had been used as a store room and quite a few walls and gates from the original complex. The walls are massive and built sloping inwards towards the top, created out of massive stones it must have been really hard work to create. We walked round the whole area which was really peaceful despite being quite busy, a number of the trees still have cherry blossom but quite a lot of the rhododendrons have also come out so it was quite full of colour. I bet it is really spectacular once everything is out. As we walked in you could hear what sounded like people practicing a martial art with sticks but unfortunately this was taking place in another building that we couldn’t go into. It took a few hours to walk round the whole grounds, then we left through the same gate we came in by and walked round to the main square and the only place you can get a view of the palace itself. The building looks quite old but it is difficult to tell from the distance we were. By this time it was well past lunch time so we decided to go and try and find a restaurant which we eventually did although it turned out to be quite an expensive one but the food was good and it was nice to have a sit down.we thought we might go on the hop on hop off bus but it is a really short route so in the end we went back to the hotel and packed up the bags to send them off to Kyoto where we will meet up with them again in a few days! We then went up to the room for a coffee and a relax before heading out for something to eat and get ready for moving on tomorrow.
