It was a terribly rainy day. Despite such a bad weather, more than 30 people from all over the world participated in the tour. We were glad to welcome that many people in such unusual weather in this time of a year. Usually, May is best month for outdoor activity. Its climate is best in a year. It is beginning of summer but not too hot and not too wet with very few rainy days. That is why many outdoor events are held in May. On first weeked annual Tokyo Rainbow Pride Event and Parade were held in Yoyogi Park and mainstreet in Shibuya Ward. The Shibuya is known to be most fashionable district in Tokyo. In the event stage shows were held and many booths were set up for forums and sales. Some booths were from foreign embassies. Then the march was held to the main street, where big department stores showed rainbow billboards to show their support. Around 6000 people marched saying “Happy Pride.” A lot of foreigners joined the parade. This symbolised how considerate Japan has become in terms of LGBT issues to correspond to global trend, which is being LGBT is what one is born with, not one chooses to do, so no one should be […]
Thank you to all the wonderful guests who joined our tour on May 6, 2017. It was a beautiful sunny day but it felt a little hotter than a usual spring afternoon, so it was a good day to have some ice cream during the tour. (There is a place where you can buy ice cream inside the Imperial Palace East Gardens.) When we gathered at the Tokyo station, it seemed the people walking around were a little bit fewer than usual. Maybe it’s because it was during what we Japanese call the “Golden Week”, a week that contains 4 public holidays starting from the end of April till the beginning of May where many people go on short vacations outside of Tokyo. Although there were no cherry blossoms anymore, there were many other flowers blooming inside the East Garden. Especially the wisteria in Ninomaru Garden (a beautiful Japanese garden inside the Imperial Palace East Gardens) were amazing. Pretty soon the iris will be blooming (there are more than 80 kinds of them in the Ninomaru Garden!), so if you are in Tokyo during May and June, please try to include the Imperial Palace East Gardens in one of your destinations. […]
A big thanks to all the people who participatd in our tour on May 3rd in Asakusa. We welcomed 20 people from Europe, North America and Australia. I would like to express my deepest appreciation for choosing our tour. The weather was lovely.It was the Constitution Day, a national holiday in Japan and the streets in Asakusa were very crowded with peoople prior to SANJA Matsuri(Festival). I hope all of the participants enjoyed the moment in the old town of Tokyo. After cherry blossoms have been blown away, the matsuri season will come. During the month of May a number of the traditional matsuri are held througout the country. Among them Asakusa SANJA Matsuri may be most famous and spectacular in Tokyo to be held in mid May (19-21th this year).This is the festival of Asakusa Shrine where three founders(Sanja) of the Kannon statue of Sensoji Temple are enshrined as Shinto gods.Sanja Festival features about 100 powerful mikoshi, portable shrines in which Shinto gods are symbolically placed and parade the streets to bring good fortune to the local residents. Mikoshi is decorated with gold sculpture and painted with gold leaf. Each one weighs about 1,000 kilograms carried by approximately 40 people. You may […]
Thank you for joining Tokyo Free Walking Tour of Asakusa area. We welcomed more than ten guests on that day. Did you enjoy the tour? Did you find your ideal items? The weather was perfect at around 20 degrees Celsius. As this chart shows, we started with Asakusa Tourist Info. Center and ended at Asakusa Shinto shrine. In this historical location, visitors can have a lot of options like shopping salable items or strolling in historical assets like Sensoji Templ and Asakusa Shinto Shrine. Furthermore, we hope you’ll get interested in the two types of diets you can see in these religious compounds as follows. “Nio Statues” & “Koma-inu Statues”（ An excerpt from guide scripts） Let’s take a close look at the mouths of these statues. These statues are called Nio Statues and they are often in pairs. It can be seen in most temples, not only in Japan but also in other neighboring Asian countries. The statue on the left side is call “A-gyou” because it has an open mouth resembling the way the sound of letter A or “AH” is pronounced. It instructs us to be open to spiritual awakening and be thoroughly insightful in engaging […]
We welcomed more than 70 guests from all over the world to our regular tour on Saturday, April 29th. It was so nice a day until the last minute when sudden drizzle occurred as weather report just had told in the morning. But it wasn’t a big problem. We could see full of smiles on this day as usual! We must say good-by to cherry blossoms this year, but flowers after flowers continue to bloom. Azalea wisteria And some beautiful flowers which I don’t know! I am really happy to be born in a country full of flowers in every season. In my garden, roses (but still buds) start to bloom this year, too. Roses, Irises, and hydrangeas will be coming soon! Why don’t you join us? By Kyoko
・Date/Time : April 30, 2017 ( 9:30―10:30 ) ・Meeting Place : Beside the police box by the Kaminarimon Gate of the Sensoji temple in Asakusa. [more on where to find us] ・We leave at 9:30. Please take care to arrive on time ! ・Participation Fee : Free ・Reservation : Not required ・The number of the participants of Asakusa tour are limited. First-come-first-served basis. Thank you for your understanding. ・Participants : Foreign tourists and residents, and their accompanying Japanese friends, families, etc. For more information on our tour please visit our website, facebook and tripadvisor page!.
We thank guests from all over the world who joined the tour on that day. 66 people joined us from Germany, Portugal, USA, Israel, Malaysia, Australia, Argentina, Spain, Czech, France, Mexico, U.K. Croatia, and Italy. We divided into 5 groups. Now the cherry blossom season is over. The flower is known to be short-lived so we learn the lesson that happiness is a sudden gift and never last forever. It seems spring is gradually turning to summer as it gets warmer day by day in Tokyo. But in Japan, up north you can still go skiing. In Yuzawa town, Niigata Prefecture, 1 and half hour bullet-train ride from Tokyo Station, there still remained good amount of snow and ski resorts are open until May. But down south, in Okinawa Prefecture, 3 hour flight from Tokyo is already in summer season so you can swim in the sea. Recently Okinawa has become popular among foreign tourists visiting Japan. If you want to fly there from Tokyo, right wing side window seat is recommended. You can view Mt. Fuji from the window during the flight. Okinawa is southernmost prefecture and consists of several islands surrounded by coral reef. The climate is different […]
We welcomed 72 guests from all around of the world on April 15. We divided the guests into 7 groups and started our tour at 1:00 pm from Tokyo station. The following are the group pictures. . It was cloudy warm day and it was almost end of cherry blossom season but a few flowers remained. There were many kinds of flowers in the park not only cherry blossom but also Thunb(Iris japonica) and azalea and more. Cherry blossoms are No1 flower for most of Japanese even it is over the full blossom. We wait for cherry blossoms blooming,enjoy for very short time,look a shower of cherry blossoms,and look foword to next year’s cherry blossoms. We must be anxious about cherry blossom would be fallen by heavy rain or strong wind during flower blooming. There is a poem written in ninth-century in Japan. If it were not for Cherry blossoms in the world, How peaceful and calm The heart in spring could be! Thanks to all the guests for joining and having good time with us. Please enjoy JAPAN and please enjoy the next cherry blossoms if you have a chance. We have […]
Thank you to all the wonderful guests who joined our tour on April 8. Although it was not a perfect day to go out for a walk (it was cloudy and we had some drizzles here and there), we welcomed almost 100 guests from all around the world. The cherry blossoms in the East Gardens of the Imperial palace were in full bloom, and many people were taking pictures of the beautiful pink flowers. It will be all gone soon, so if you are still in Japan, you must hurry! In our group, we had two boys as guests.They were having fun playing Pokemon Go during the tour. (There are quite a few pokestops in the East Gardens, so if you are playing it, this is the place you should go!) We talked about the pokemon we can only find in Japan called Kamonegi, in English Farfetch’d. They had not caught it yet, but I hope they can during their stay in Japan. Soon, spring will be over and the rainy season, in Japan we call it “tsuyu（梅雨）”, will come. After tsuyu, the hot and humid summer will arrive. Even though the cherry blossoms will pretty soon be […]
We held a weekday tour for this day. Sunny and warm, a little bit windy, but the climate was just splendid to stroll around the peak season of the cherry blossom! We welcomed 28 guests from the U.S.A., Canada, Chile, France, Slovakia, Malaysia, and made 4 groups to go on for the walk. One of our French guests told us that they came to Japan to enjoy their honeymoon. They very much wanted to come at at the Cherry Blossom season. Once we heard that, all of the guests in our group started celebrating them. How pleased we were to hear such good news and how proud we felt to be included as a piece of memory of their treasured trip !! Even the cherry blossoms seemed to say “Happy Wedding!! ” for them too! Usually the Honmaru area is a quiet area but at this time of year, it is very lively! This day, especially near the cherry blossom trees , we could see unusual scenes. Company directors taking a group photo, people sitting on the lawn and chatting, businessmen bringing their lunch-box enjoying their meal in a circle .(Yes, this area is near a business district called Marunouchi) […]
