Took Hokuriku Shinkansen to Tokyo direct in less than 3 hours. There were plenty of vacant seats in the non-reserved cars till Nagano.

Stayed in Shibuya – one of our fav areas and keen to find out how it might have evolved after new buildings like Shibuya Scramble Square have sprung up in the last few years. Overall it was as busy as in the past.

 

Rikugien (六義園)

Our first visit. Although Koyo has slightly past peak, there were plenty of local visitors on a normal weekday.  It is a beautiful landscape garden with well designed trails, interspersed by streams, ponds and bridges.  Stayed there for 1 hour+.

 

 

Kamakura

On the next day we headed to Kamakura and Shonan – our fav spots outside Tokyo metropolitan.  It happened that a festival was held in the Tsuruoka Hachiman-gu, where we found many youngsters in school uniforms, apart from many locals.

 

 

In the evening, met up with local friends who had arranged a Japanese dinner in a traditional restaurant in Omotesando, which served produce from Niigata Prefecture.  It was such a nice reunion in Japan post-covid 🙂

 

 

 

======>   Tokyo (Part 2)   ======>