A Little Tokyo 

I had a nice breakfast (scrambled eggs) this morning in the ryokan, and Sakai picked me up at nine. We first went on several  subways to the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. This is an impressive and old temple (rebuilt in 1958 after being destroyed in an air raid in 1945) and unlike all the temples in Thailand, there is no giant buddha sitting on the altar. Apparently there's a tiny buddha which is not shown to the public but is still there. None of this stops people from shopping in the shops on the two blocks leading up to the temple; souvenir shops but nice ones. Not many t-shirts but some kimonos.  I had a freshly fried rice cracker which was good!  

Then back into the subway for a roundabout trip to the Imperial Palace which, no surprise to me, isn't open to the public, but we walked to the Nijubashi Bridge for the obligatory photos of a few turrets rising over the trees. Walking across the wide expanse of empty public land around the palace in a biting wind was not good for either of us; Sakai had only  a light windbreaker and was obviously very cold, as was I even in my buttoned-up stormcoat, so we caught a taxi back the few blocks to the Tokyo Station. We were able to get onto a shinkansen train, very nice, within a few minutes after collecting luggage at the lockers, and got uninteresting bento box lunches to eat on the train.