mr.sumo.snr. wrote:

> More to the point I have my parents landing at Narita on Tuesday morning. 
> First visit since I moved here back in 1995.  Any words of wisdom, 
> especially regarding possible eating venue/venues for next Tuesday and 
> Wednesday night - NO not traditional Japanese.  We're staying in central 
> Tokyo at the Akasaka Excel Tokyu (hell I'm not paying!!!).

If someone else is paying, I always recommend Hassan, in Roppongi, on 
Roppongi-dori.  It's in the basement of the building immediately next to 
the Aoyama Book Center.  Haven't been in a while, but they used to have 
a Yen 5,000 ~ 5,500 tabehodai set that would fill up most tourists.

> If anyone could also suggest, say, two places to visit in Tokyo during a 
> day's sightseeing I'd be really grateful - I AM the original crap person at 
> being a tourist in my own country/place in which I live.  And these places 
> should be the sort that'll help my mother fill-up the tape on her 
> video-camera - no she's NOT into hard-core S&M.

I've got this standard one-day drag around for people who want to mostly 
see what other tourists miss.  Lots of flowers and history.  If your 
parents are into walking, it's even better.

Start out at Zozoji in Daimon which is one corner of the old Shoguns' 
palace precincts.  Inside the grounds of the temple is a second temple 
dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu as a god.  Behind those buildings are a 
group of Tokugawa family graves and the obligatory field of "water baby" 
statues.

Walk out the front gate of Zozoji and you'll go under the Daimon (good 
photo op).  Continue down the same road toward the Kokusai Boeki Sentaa- 
and just after the entrance to Hamamatsucho-eki there is the entrance to 
the remnants of a huge garden that belonged to the vacation house of one 
of the main daimyo.  It's maybe a hundred yen a head to go in.  They 
have a Fujimi (one of the hills you used to be able to stand on to see 
Fuji-san) and the classic Chinese water / mountain / plain layout.

When you get done doing a round of the park, head back out the gate and 
continue on down the same road.  The next stop is Hamarikyu, which is an 
  old hunting lodge of one of the daimyo that's been turned into a 
nature preserve.  Check your maps for the easiest way to get there.  All 
you _have_ to do is to walk down to Kaigan-dori (the next main road 
which is eight lanes of smoky, out of tune, diesel tractor trailers with 
an overhead kosoku ramp to hold the ambiance down to the level of your 
nose) and hang a left, then continue on for about 500 meters.  It's a 20 
minute walk or you can grab a taxi and get there in about ten minutes 
due to the screwed up heavy truck traffic.

Hamarikyu has about eight different sections and lots of signs that 
describe what it is you're looking at.  Most seem to have been 
translated by Mrs. Watanabe's fourth period English class just after 
they'd completed the unit on nouns.  The one cool thing at the park for 
furriners is the tea house over the salt marsh where you sit them down 
and do the traditional sweets and green tea number for a couple of 
hundred yen a head.

There is a water taxi stop at one corner of the park where you can catch 
the boat for Asakusa.  Good opportunity to drink beer while your mother 
tapes all of the buildings on both sides of Sumida-gawa.  It's also a 
great opportunity to photograph the Flying Golden Turd on top of the 
Asahi Beer headquarters.

Walk them up to Sensoji and let them turn back into tourists.  If 
they're hungry, there are lots of restaurants on the back streets around 
the temple.

If you start out around 10:30, you'll be done by about 16:30.  You can 
either chikatetsu back to your hotel or take a taxi.

CL