05
2017Tokyo | Chiyoda Hie Shrine
Japan 2017
05.05.2017 | Travel Photography | Japan | Tokyo
Tokyo
After a healthy breakfast in a typical Japanese corner restaurant, we hired bicycles at a hotel nearby and set off to explore the megacity Tokyo. The friendly and very courteous staff gave us a map with the hire stations and marked the point where we started, so we could find our way back later on. As on most of our travels, we didn’t bring a tourist book to follow. Instead, we love to explore and decide at every intersection by gut feeling whether to go left, right or straight. We have been cycling at a leisurely pace for a while, when we arrived at an intersection where the straight option was an escalator on a steep hill. With nobody around that we could have bothered, we took the bikes on the escalator to see what we would find on top of the hill.
Chiyoda Hie Shrine
Well, how should I tell you that we basically stumbled upon the world famous Hie Shrine? A popular landmark, which many tourists miss because it is a little difficult to find. What a great surprise! And once again – seeing something for the first time is so much more satisfying than just verifying the images from the tourist book with your own eyes. Wandering around quietly, we enjoyed the beauty and peace of this wonderful place.
Riding downhill was a lot of fun but, as always, the next steep street uphill wasn’t far away. We cycled past the House of Representatives and through the mostly deserted (due to a public holiday) business district, heading towards the Imperial Palace Gardens. Tokyo is a beautiful city with many sculptures and other pieces of art along the roads.
Sebastian Motsch | instagram @drivebysnapshots