Tokyo - Day 2 (Tsukiji, Ginza, Imperial Garden, Akihabara)

We started our second day with a visit of the Tsujiki fish market, one of the biggest fish markets of the world. Even though our guide said visiting the tuna auction is a must-see we skipped it, as the action starts at 5am and one has to be there at around 4am to get a spot at all.
Still, the market is amazing. Lots of small booths with narrow passages between them selling not only fish but also vegetables, fruits and kitchen-ware. We had some sashimi on a rice bowl for breakfast, for my taste (1k) not as delicous as I thought (and as the price tag suggested). However, it might just be that I ordered the wrong dish for my taste. Trying out new food is one of the great things of such a trip.

Master at work sharpening a sword knife.

All kind of fish and seafood for sale.

From the market we went through Ginza (shopping district with lots of luxury brands such as Hermès) to the Imperial Palace Garden.

Kabuki theater in Ginza.

It's quite a contrast to the usual modern tokyo were space is scarce and everything is packed together with high skyscrapers. The Palace Garden is quite vast in contrast (4k even took a picture with no skyscrapers at all) and simple but beautiful. The lawn was extremely well kept (like a British lawn ;-) ) and the trees looked like large Bonsai. Obviously, the Imperial Palace itself was off limits, but there were some great spots to take pictures from.

View on the imperial palace.

Next stop (taking several pictures on the way, there is always something worth taking a picture of nearby in Tokyo - 4k: actually, there are TOO MUCH things worth to take pictures of, I'd rather have a video camera..) was the Tokyo Station. A big red brick-building, which is another great contrast to the modern skyscrapers around.

One part of Tokyo (main) Station.

Since we had walked quite a lot until this point (feel free to follow this journey on a map), we decided to take the subway to our next destination. This is a Go-trip after all so we headed to a Go-club, which will be handled in a seperate post.

As the evening progressed it was time for dinner and we headed off in the direction of Akihabara. We had Ramen for Dinner in a very nice little spot with a young, very friendly owner who spoke a little English. We had a small chat and he told us about a German Go player (Yannick Baron..?) who sometimes comes to eat here.

After this short rest and with full stomaches we ventured forth to Akihabara, which is yet another"hip" and exciting district with tons of luminous advertising. The visit to the Book Tower near Akihabara Station proved to be quite interesting, as in the section for Japanese language books (4k is trying to learn Japanese), we met a young Chinese woman who apparently lives in Tokyo and studies Japanese at a school in Akihabara. The conversation took place in a strange mix of English, Japanese, a few Chinese words and the extensive usage of translation/dictionary-apps on smartphones (4k: Sometimes machine translation isn't THAT bad!).
Quite a long day as you might have noticed if you followed this on a map.