At the end of March and beginning of April of 2013 my family came to visit me in Tokyo. We did all sorts of things, and I showed them my favorite spots and the different sides of Tokyo.
We started in the Ueno Park where we walked among the cherry blossoms, had coffee at my favorite Starbucks, and visited the National Museum of Nature and Science. It was a very nice museum with a number of different sections: try-it-yourself-experiments, dinosaurs, stuffed animals, fossils, etc. There were even objects from Sweden!
The next day we went to the Edo-Tokyo Open-air Architectural Museum which belongs to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. This outdoor museum consists of many old and historical buildings that were either brought here or reconstructed on the site. The first time I visited the museum was during a festival the autumn before, so it felt different to visit in daylight during spring. But it was so beautiful with all the cherry blossoms and other spring blossoms! We walked into some of the houses and it was very interesting to see what historical Japanese houses looked like. After all, I am very interested in history in general.
On day three we walked from Ueno to Asakusa, one of my favorite spots in Tokyo. Asakusa is an old city and the “old feeling” remains there. I think it’s a very nice place to take a walk! We started at the “thunder gate” Kaminarimon and slowly made our way along Nakamise (the old shopping street) towards the Sensoji Temple. In the middle of shopping for souvenirs we were stopped by a very young school class who wanted to ask questions to foreigners to practice their English. Of course my family helped them out!
Then we jumped onto a boat on the Sumida River, watched the cherry blossoms along the shores and jumped off at Hamarikyu Gardens – an amazing Japanese park/garden. We strolled around the area for some time before taking the train to Odaiba. We did some shopping, and of course we took some time to look at the night view of Tokyo on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge!
