Day 03 - Sunday 29th July

Our hotel room faces east and so gets the morning sun. The curtains are heavy enough to block out most of the light so as not to wake us up. When we opened the curtains, it was another bright sunny day with hardly any clouds in the sky - but still hazy.

Today we'd booked to go on an all-day bus tour of the highlights of Tokyo. We set the alarm and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant again. The bus was due to leave from our hotel at 8am and so we made sure that we were at the pick-up point five minutes early. Just as well because the bus left at exactly 8am.

As usual for these tours, we went from hotel to hotel picking up passengers and so it was just after 9am before the tour proper started.

The first stop was Tokyo Tower which is a tall communication tower with an observation platform at 250m above ground level that gave us a good view of the city.

The next stop was the same park and shrine (Meiji Shrine) that we'd visited yesterday on our own. At least this time we got a guided tour.

Back on the bus, we drove past the Akasaka Guest House (where visiting royalty and presidents stay) and the National Diet building (parliament house). We stopped at the Imperial Palace East Garden for a pleasant stroll through the beautiful grounds.

The bus then drove past the Ginza shopping district and stopped at a commercial area for lunch. Some passengers left the tour at that point. Of the ones who, like us, were continuing on the full-day tour, everyone except us had paid extra for a Japanese banquet for lunch. We'd decided we didn't need another banquet and so we just had a light lunch at Starbucks.

After lunch, we were joined by people who'd booked for the afternoon tour and drove to another pleasant garden, Hama-Rikyu Garden. Next we went on a cruise of the Sumida River for about 30 minutes.

At the end of the cruise, we met a Samurai warrior who gave us a brief performance. The plan was to spend about 45 minutes walking through the shopping street (small stalls) at Asakusa. At the end of the shopping street were several impressive temples including one that was five stories high.

The bus was due to leave at 5:10 but four passengers were almost 30 minutes late!

Next we drove past various shopping centres at Kappabashi, Ueno and Akihabara. By this time it was about 6pm.

Our guide had told us that, if we stayed on the bus, it would be 7:30 or 8pm by the time they dropped us back at our hotel and so we decided to catch the train instead.

It took us a while to find the correct train line (JR Sobu line) and the right platform but it was worth the effort - partly because of the experience of the train trip and partly because we were back in our hotel soon after 6:30pm.

It had been a tiring day. Although an all-day tour would normally be tiring, it was more tiring because of the heat and humidity. Each day so far, the daytime temperature was over 30C.

For dinner we decided to go to the hotel restaurant (where we go for breakfast). The meal was fairly expensive but very delicious.