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Today I decided to visit Japans past and took myself through the subway to Ootemachi - I got lost, of course, and had to pay extra to get through the turnstyles because I had taken another companys train... took the long escalators out of the smelly subway and into the noisy streets. Luckily I had come right to the spot I wanted - The Imperial Palace grounds. Walked in through the huge stone and wooden gates, entry was free (boon!) and there was also a free but rudimentry English tour going around. Half of the grounds are not open to visitors except for 2 days of the year, as the Emperor still lives there, but I got to stroll around his garden. Camera battery was going flat but I got a few photos.

After that I walked around the moat running along the busy city street, where there were many people jogging and sweating, and walked up to a street well known for its second hand books. I slowly browsed and found an old hard cover book of Genji Monogatari with big old pictures in it going quite cheap so I bought that.

Hungry, I found a little kaiten sushi place and had a few plates, then kept on walking to my destination (I worked out later I could have caught the subway, of course) the Yasukuni Shrine.
Quite a contriversial place, since it officially pays homage to Japanese who have died in past wars, including class-A war criminals, so understandably Korea, China and other Asian countries that Japan tried to colonise early last century take offence when the PM Koizumi and other politicians visit there. You could say its the equvalent of Melbournes war memorial. It was very well maintained, but the peacefulness that you usually get from shrines was kind of replaced with (I felt) a bit of tension. There were alot of elderly people walking about too. What struck me was off to the right of the shrine there was a small exhibit / museum with an old warplane (interestingly with a Mitsubishi motor in it) and an old steam locomotive that used to run on the Thai-Burma railway. They both looked quite sinister, even more than the bullet hole scarred cannons in there too. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have zoom through the air in a big clunky plane like that.
There were some earlier pieces too, like old samurai swords which were intricately carved with dragons and polished silver, and the heavy armour was on show there too. Beautiful, but deadly.

After that I left and took a few more photos on the way out.

Caught the subway back to Shirokane-takanawa and dumped my stuff, then headed out again to Shinjuku in the subway WITHOUT error, so Im feeling pretty clucky about that. You have to get good at reading the signs. Im now on the 6th floor of BIC CAMERA, a giant 6 level electronics store - Im in Gaget Heaven!