Shibamata was a setting of a famous national movie. After the visit to a Buddhist temple called Taishakuten, we are to make a tour to a neighboring former private old house called Yamamototei, where you can enjoy green tea and sweets while seeing a cozy Japanese-style garden. An approach to Taishakuten is lined with casual restaurants, souvenir shops and sweets shops.
At your hotel in the middle of Tokyo
Taishakuten(Buddhist temple)
Shopping, eating and mingling with local people
Yamamototei(cultural property with Japanese-style garden and powdered green tea drinking)
Ueno station
In short, you feel the atmosphere of the low land Tokyo area(the eastern part) because you might see ordinary people coming and going vigorously and hear shop-employees calling lively. A variety of foods including sushi, tempura, Soba or Japanese buckwheat noodles, broiled eel and sweet dumplings are very wonderful and reasonably priced. Yamamototei was built during the period from 1926 to 1930, in which the house is designated as an important cultural property, and in addition its garden is selected as the third finest Japanese-garden in Japan by an American magazine. After that, when you go up to the bank of Edogawa River, you might feel like being a local.
guide fee, hotel pick-up, guide transportation fee
- Your transportation fee(about 1500 yen per person)
- Lunch, snack and tea(about 2000 to 3000 yen per person)
- Entrance fee(only Yamamototei: 100 yen per person, plus about 1000 yen for other facilities such as memorial museums)
The guide takes you to Taishakuten and Yamamototei as basic destinations but the tour will be carried out in a flexible manner, based on discussion with you on the way.
Yamamototei is closed on every third Tuesday.
He has characteristics that tourist guides “must have”
Dear Div I am very pleased to hear you praise my personality, and you enjoyed walking on the shopping streets and through the park. There are many things to see and experience in Japan. I hope you will come to Japan again and we will see each other again. Thank you so much. Hiro
Hiroyuki is an amicable, pleasant guide whose English is good but not fluent. We had some questions that he clearly did not understand. Our trip to Nikko was not a success because Hiro was not prepared with a “Plan B’” in mind for the difficulties that we experienced. The difficulties were not his fault: a national holiday that created horrific problems and delays on public transportation and fog that prevented us from seeing 2 out of 3 sites in Nikko. We are 4 very active senior citizens but standing on trains and especially crammed busses for hours was not pleasurable. We could not even see the landscape. Adding the fact that it was foggy was a recipe for disaster. We finally made it to the ropeway and Hiro seemed surprised that we didn’t want to go up. There would be nothing to see in total fog! The situation was similar with the waterfall area. We did have a nice lunch but by the time we waited yet again for a packed bus, we decided to skip the shrine as it was already 3:30pm. Basically we traveled to Nikko and saw nothing but the train and bus stations! Much of this was not Hiro’s fault BUT much could have been mitigated by him doing the following: 1. Offer an option for private transportation in Nikko via taxi or van for a fee. 2. Check the weather conditions and have a plan for alternative activities. In our case he should have reversed his schedule so that we could have at least seen the shrine in town! He didn’t know about the fog…we don’t know the area but knew there were foggy conditions because we checked the weather prior to departure! We are experienced travelers and don’t stop because of weather! However, fog that obliterated 2 out of 3 sites plus transportation chaos meant an unfavorable experience.
Dear Debra Thank you very much for joining the tour to Nikko. I am very sorry that your precious day was spoiled by bad weather, traffic jams and my bad conduct. Hiroyuki
Hiroyuki was very friendly but sometimes a little hard to understand and we felt that if his grasp of english had been better he would have had a lot of knoledge to impart. The tour was wonderful and we took a lot of photos to remind us of the beauty of this area.
Dear Frans Thank you for joining the tour in the countryside to see waterfalls. I am very surprised to hear that you are very knowledgeable about Japan. I enjoyed accompanying you as a guide. Hiroyuki
Hiroyuki was very flexible and accommodating as we only had a few hours to spend in Tokio. Very nice experience! Wish we had more time to learn more about Japan and its culture.
Dear Carolina Thank you for your good appraisal on my job. I am very pleased that you spent the precious time on experiencing Japanese culture and talking about many things to each other. I am waiting for you to come to Japan again and at that time I would like to accompany you as a guide. Japan is a wonderful country to travel in and it have many things to see. Hiroyuki