Meiji Shrine: 明治神宮

It's located conveniently close by the massive Yoyogi Park as well as the Harajuku shopping precinct in central Tokyo, just minutes from Shibuya.

Meiji Jingū (明治神宮) is the Shinto shrine dedicated to the divine soul of Emperor Meiji, the second son of Emperor Komei, and the royal instigator of the much-touted Meiji Restoration - which brought Japan out of 300 years of feudal isolation.

When he passed away in 1912, the emperor was in fact buried in the Fushimi Momoyama Ryo in Kyoto, but his soul was enshrined in Meiji Jingu here in Tokyo once the shrine was constructed on November 1, 1920.

Surrounding the huge shrine complex is a 700,000 square-meter evergreen forest of some 120,000 trees, boasting 365 different varieties.

Literally millions, jammed together, visit over the first few days of each New Year, and seijinsai (the coming-of-age ceremony for girls) is celebrated here, just as it is at other shrines in Japan, in January.

People get wedding pictures here, and kids celebrate shichi-go-san (traditional rites of passage for three- and seven-year-old girls and three- and five-year-old boys). We took our daughter here for her third birthday.

But there are some more vital events held in Meiji Jingu.


During the Spring Grand Festival at the end of April, bugaku (a traditional form of ceremonial dance and music), noh (traditional theatre), sankyoku and hogaku (traditional music), hobu (traditional dance), and kyudo (a Japanese variant on archery) are performed.

During the Autumn Grand Festival in early November, in addition to the same events as the Spring Grand Festival, yabusame (horseback archery), budo (martial arts), and aikido are also showcased.

My only complaint is that it's a long stroll across gravel surfaces from Harajuku Station.

Yoyogi National Gymnasium

A couple of days a week I get to teach English to half-bored, half-cool students at a design college in Harajuku (right).

The view from our lecture room on the fourth floor is a superb one that takes in the Yoyogi National Gymnasium (国立代々木競技場), below, and I often find myself glancing out there.

Apparently internationally famous for its suspension roof design, it was designed by Kenzo Tange - the man behind the iconic Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku, which opened in 1991.


The Yoyogi National Gymnasium was built between 1961 and 1964 to house swimming and diving events in the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics; word is that the design also inspired Frei Otto's arena designs for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

The arena holds somewhere in the vicinity of 13,000 people and is now primarily used for ice hockey and basketball - but also was used for the 2010 World Judo Championships, and J-Pop star Ayumi Hamasaki has most of her Tokyo concerts here.

Hamarikyu Gardens

Sometimes it does tend to feel like Tokyo is all concrete, but you'd be sorely mistaken - there's also bitumen, ceramics and glass thrown into the mix.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

While this city isn't quite so famous for its parks (aside from Yoyogi kōen, which is overrated) there're some open space gems to be found if you try looking hard enough.

Hamarikyu Gardens (浜離宮恩賜庭園, Hama-rikyū Onshi Teien) is one of these elusive baubles.

Dubbed "the family garden of the Tokugawa Shogun" in the brochure you can get for free at the entrance, it's a huge park that dates back 350 years and features a 300-year-old pine tree and a Peony Garden that claims to stock 60 different types of paeony.


There're two wild-duck hunting sites (called kamoba) used for falconry by the Shogun families, and the more recent addition of a kamozuka - a grave built in 1935 to console the spirits of the ducks that were killed.

There's even a tidal pond carrying water from Tokyo Bay, something I think the relevant Park Association would be better off to play down.

After the Meiji Restoration the garden apparently became a detached palace area for the Imperial Family, but it was devastated during both the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and World War II bombings.

In 1945, after the war, the garden was given to the City of Tokyo and it became open to the public the following year - some 300 years after it was first conceived.