Tokyo Station and Palace Gardens

As in Europe, I had to go to a specific office at a specific station to exchange my rail pass, so I chalked up half of my second day to getting that and some train reservations taken care, then went to see the imperial palace (or at least the parts I was allowed to see) afterwards.

One corner of Tokyo Station. Larger picture on my flickr. Don't let the windows fool you:
the building's like 7 or 8 stories tall.

I got to Tokyo Station via the metro, which was much simpler than expected. Tokyo has three different sets of metro lines, owned by three different companies, which don't accept each others tickets. I wasn't sure how that worked and was worried about getting on a train with the wrong ticket, but if two companies share a station, you basically have to exit the station and enter through another exit to get to another company's trains.

Lunch was Pork and Sesame ramen. That egg really was that
orange, by the way. It was kinda freaky O__o

Getting the pass approved and getting my ticket to Kyoto were pretty simple (Nikko and Kamakura are a bit more involved, but I'll cover that later), so I wandered around the station for a bit. Tokyo Station is a city unto itself, with grocery stores, shopping malls, department stores, hotels, food courts, and the like everywhere. I tried to find this place called 'Ramen Street,' which is where a bunch of Japan's best ramen places are, but couldn't find it. Found a place called 'Kitchen Street' and though the name had changed, so I grabbed some there at a place called Umauma. Found the place I was looking for later, three stories down.

Wandering around was fun, because you'd turn a corner and be somewhere COMPLETELY new. I left the restaurant where I had lunch  and took a wrong turn and ended up in this GIANT open area, totally covered in pink and white and full of shop girls that were all selling different kinds of sweets and pastries (and one who was selling dried fishes on sticks...don't know how she ended up there). I bought some candies, wandered a bit more, bought some Japanese whisky (jealous Diego?), and eventually meandered my way out of the station.

I wandered down towards the Palace, which was much more of a walk than I anticipated (it looked so

Palace building across the moat.

close!). You aren't actually allowed on the proper palace grounds, and even getting into the inner garden required a special reservation I couldn't get, so I was just planning on exploring the East Garden, which is open to the public. Apparently the day I went, the entrance fee had been waived, so there were HUGE crowds of Japanese folks everywhere. I mostly took photos in the open areas, so it doesn't really show that, but anytime we had to go through a gate or line, it got pretty cramped.

Old style guard house.

The gardens were nice enough, and they had some full-size bonsai-style trees that were cool to see, but it was more of just a large park with some reproductions of historical buildings (a lot of the original palace was destroyed in the war). I wandered a bit, then headed home, got off my feet for a bit, then went out to the fancy dinner I mentioned above.