Not Tokyo Imperial Palace; Meiji Jingu Shrine

You might be wondering about the “Not” in the above title, “Not Tokyo Imperial Palace; Meiji Jingu Shrine.” Well, let me tell you. Let’s just say that things didn’t work out quite as I hoped and expected.

After finishing up at the Tsukiji Fish Market this morning, I took a forty-or-so-minute walk over to the Tokyo Imperial Palace. It’s the Emperor of Japan’s place, don’t ya know?

Not Quite the Tokyo Imperial Palace

I wasn’t expecting to get into the inner compound, and certainly not the palace itself.

You can go into the inner compound only on guided tours that occur twice a day, five days a week. There are no tours on Sundays or Mondays. The first tour on the other days is at 10:00 in the morning. The second is at 1:30 in the afternoon. You can register for the tours online, but when I checked after arriving in Tokyo, registration was closed for all of the tours while I’m here.

There are 300 walk-in tickets available for the tours, but I don’t know if that’s reduced by the number of people who book tickets in advance. The walk-in tickets become available one hour before the tour starts. And you have to line up for them even before they become available.

I was on the tour when I was in Tokyo about seven years ago. I don’t remember being terribly impressed, so I decided I probably won’t go this time.

However, I seemed to recall that the Tokyo Imperial Palace has some impressive grounds that you can walk through without going on the tour. I seem to have recalled incorrectly. Either that or they changed their policies, but probably the former.

You can walk around a path on the other side of the moat that wraps around the imposing stone wall that surrounds the palace compound. From there, you can view the bridges, including at least one impressive one, that cross the moat, heavy gates into the compound, and some buildings that poke up above the wall. But that’s about it.

The Imperial Palace has some gardens, the East Gardens, that are open for public visits without going on a tour. The gardens are on the far side of the Imperial Palace from where I approached it. I started to walk to the gardens.

Before getting to it, I saw some signs mentioning the gardens in the small English portion of the signs’ text. The signs were accompanied by two calendars, one for November and one for December. Today is October 31. The October calendar wasn’t there.

Then I noticed that the gardens are closed on Fridays and Mondays. Today is Friday.

What the what? It was entirely my stupidity. When I checked my various tourist information sources later, I saw they did indeed mention the Friday and Monday closings. But I hadn’t paid attention earlier because I just assumed it’d be open on Fridays.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a tourist attraction that closes Fridays. Mondays? Sure, lots of them close on Mondays. Sometimes on Tuesdays or even Wednesdays, too. But I can’t recall ever encountering one that closed on Fridays. Maybe Muslim attractions do because Fridays are their Sabbaths, but I’m fairly certain that the Emperor of Japan isn’t Muslim.

After I was thwarted at the Imperial Palace, I made a quick decision to hop on a subway and visit the Meiji Jingu Shrine. That was much more successful, but not without one failure.

Meiji Jingu Shrine

If you read this morning’s post, you know that, when I looked at it in the morning, the weather forecast for today called for rain all afternoon. When I left the Imperial Palace, that hadn’t yet happened. And it still wasn’t raining when I arrived at Meiji Jingu Shrine. That’s a good thing, because a visit to the shrine is mostly outdoors.

The Meiji Jingu Shrine is located inside a large, dense, lush forest outside the core, but still within Tokyo.

To get to the shrine compound inside the forest, from the street, you walk through a large wooden torii. A torii is a traditional ceremonial gate at the entrance to most Japanese shrines. Even if you’ve never been to Japan and don’t know what they’re called, you’ve probably seen pictures of torii, such as the one on this page. (The plural of torii is torii.)

Through the torii, you then walk along a wide road from which public vehicles are excluded. After a walk through the forest, you pass through another torii, pass some structures, walk through another torii and then reach the Meiji Jingu Shrine compound.

The walk through the forest is beautiful and calming.

At one point along the walk, on one side of the road, there’s an array of sake barrels wrapped in straw and painted. The barrels are “offered every year to the enshrined deities by members of the eiji Jingu Nationwide Sake Brewers Association.” (From a sign beside the sake barrels.)

Across from the sake barrel display, there’s an array of wine barrels. A sign beside the wine barrels explains that, “Emperor Meiji led the way in promoting modernization by embracing many features of western culture in his personal life, such as shearing his topknot and donning western attire, and in many other aspects of daily living. Among these departures, His Majesty set an example by taking western food and in particular by enjoying wine with it.

“The barrels of wine to be consecrated at Meiji Jingu have been offered by the celebrated wineries of Bourgogne in France.”

The compound has an elaborate, dark wood, open-sided entrance building. There are some shrine buildings beyond that. The public is not allowed into the main shrine itself, nor are they allowed to take pictures of the interior through the openings in the front wall.

However, in the compound, the public can buy prayers to leave there, along with amulets and predictions of their fortunes. It is much more impressive than I can describe.

There is an Inner Garden away from the main compound that the public can, and I did, visit. The inner garden has an iris garden, grass and trees, a lovely pond, a spring-fed well, and a replica of an old teahouse that wasn’t in use when I was there. I don’t know if it’s just intended as a historical replica, not for use as an operational teahouse, or if I was just there at the wrong time to find it open.

The Inner Garden is quite charming and well worth a visit.

Hmm. Well worth a visit. That reminds me. The Meiji Jingu Shrine Inner Garden is sectioned off. At the entrance, there’s a sign asking for a ¥500 donation for upkeep. The sign said “donation,” but the entrance was well-defined, and you couldn’t go through it without passing the ticket counter.

I wasn’t considering not paying the ¥500—it doesn’t convert to a lot of money—but I got the impression that the person at the gate wouldn’t have let me through without paying it. I didn’t test that theory. So I’m not sure. I just paid the money.

I don’t want to be a stickler (yes, I do), but the thing is, if you don’t have a choice but to pay it as a condition of entry, then it’s not a donation. It’s an entrance fee. As I said, I was happy to pay it. But call it what it is, for goodness’ sake. Harrumph.

It wasn’t raining at all when I entered the Inner Garden. But it started while I was there. The rain was only very light sprinkles, and I had my rain jacket and umbrella, so I continued. By the time I left the garden, the rain was a little heavier.

About a 10- or 15-minute walk through the forest from the shrine compound, there’s a Treasure Museum containing royal memorabilia. I thought that would be a perfect place to visit, considering it was raining. I arrived at the museum a few minutes before 4:00 pm.

I was sure that the museum closed at 4:30 or 5:00, which gave me some, but not a lot of time to visit. However, it was not to be. I was met at the entrance by a guard who told me it was closed.

When did it close, I asked. Four, he answered.

Missed it by tthhaatt much. (*holds up two fingers barely separated*)

So, that was my one failure at the shrine. With the rain getting heavier, it was time to walk to the nearby station on the Japan Rail city circle route that has a stop close to my hotel. (I mentioned that train in my opening post from Japan. It’s an electrically powered train that operates above ground, but the cars are configured like subway cars, and the stops are about as frequent as those on a typical subway line.)

Back at my hotel, I called it a day. Someone pointed out that, no, it’s a hotel, not a day. Point taken.