New Year : Tour Report of Meiji Shrine and Harajuku on January 7th, 2024

Thank you for choosing our Meiji Shrine and Harajuku tour on January 7th, 2024.
We welcomed 7 guests from Germany, Australia, US and Greece. I hope all of you enjoyed
and shared interesting conversations with us during the tour.
As promised, group photos and snapshots are attached to remember the fun times we had.

GR A

GR B

GR C

GR D

The number of worshipers for Hatsumode in Meiji Shrine is the largest in Japan every year.
Hatsumode is the first visit of the year to a shrine and is Japan’s original custom.
It is over three million people from 1st to 3rd of Jan. At that time it was too much crowded.
And today lots of people came to shrine.

Do you know osechi that are Japanese New Year Food. “Osechi” are traditional foods
which are eaten by a lot of Japanese on New Year’s Day. It includes many kinds of
Japanese traditional foods, and they are packed together in “Jubako”,
which is a special box that resembles bento boxes.

The representative food is Kuromame, Kazunoko, and Tazukuri.
Kuromame is sweet black soybeans. Eating Kuromame means that you can stay healthy and strong.
Kazunoko is herring roe. Kazunoko is a lot of roe, so it means “descendants prosperity”.
Tazukuri is candied sardines. It’s made from toasted baby sardines and sweet soy sauce.
Tazukuri has a meaning of “rich harvest”.

TFWT tour has Ueno park course. In Ueno National Museum of Nature and Science museum,
there is a special exhibition of WASHOKU, Japanese Cuisine until end of February.
I will recommend to see.

We always strive to give high-quality tours. Your feedback is very important and useful
to us. If you have a comment, please consider posting comments about tours on

TripAdvisor /Facebook, etc. Your remarks will certainly help us improve and continue developing our tours. Also, please tell your family and friends about us. Next time you’re in Tokyo,
please come to another one of our tours. Asakusa, Ueno park and Imperial Palace of East Garden.
Once again thank you very much.
For more information about our tour, please visit our website at
https://tfwt.jp/top/meiji-shrine-and-harajuku/ , https://www.facebook.com/TokyoFWT
or Tokyo Free Walking Tour at https://www.tripadvisor.jp/.

(Posted by Yonehara)