Day 5: Marunouchi and Tokyo Station

On the way from the Sky Tree to Gōtoku-ji in Setagaya, I made a short stop at Tokyo Station. On the one hand, the building is absolutely worth seeing, and on the other hand, I wanted to exchange the voucher for the JR Pass. Because the next day I was going on a tour!

Tokyo Station

Tokyo Station
Tokyo Station

I had briefly visited the station the evening before on the way back from Odaiba and had already taken a few pictures. Today, however, I wanted to devote a little more time to the building. The station consists of two architecturally very different parts:

  • The GranRoof on the east side, built in 2013, is a steel and glass construction designed by Helmut Jahn. It is certainly impressive, but I had already seen a lot of glass and steel buildings. There are plenty of them in Marunouchi in particular.
  • The Marunouchi building is on the west side. A wonderful red brick building designed by Tatsuno Kingo in 1913, its neo-renaissance style provides a stunning contrast to the sober facades of the surrounding skyscrapers.

The station itself is (of course) huge, one of the most important railway hubs in Japan, especially as the central hub of the Shinkansen network. I got lost what felt like a hundred times, but I was glad it happened to me that day and not on the day of travel.

The JR Pass

JR Pass :-)
JR Pass 🙂

Despite all the enthusiasm, I didn’t want to lose sight of my actual goal: to exchange the voucher. The best place to do so is the central customer center. I was helped quickly there. I delivered the voucher, showed my passport, and was given a small paper ticket with a magnetic strip. Two more tickets as well, for seat reservations for the Shinkansen to and from Sendai. Yes, really: paper tickets. Because in this fully electronically digitized country, where it feels like every toilet is talking to you, all of these tickets are only available in physical form. Of course, I took better care of this card than Gollum did his ring!

As it turned out, the seat reservations weren’t really necessary, but I didn’t want to risk standing on the train for two hours. And anyway, they’re free.

Seat reservation
Seat reservation

I then tried one of the vending machines, because I also wanted to make reservations for the other trips as early as possible. Especially on the Tokyo-Osaka route, there was a high risk that they would be sold out quickly. This turned out to be a great idea because there were indeed very few remaining seats. Unfortunately, I messed up something for the last leg to and from Kanazawa, which would later cause me a bit of grief. But overall, it worked without a problem. On the machine, you push the button for JR Pass owners, and then the terminal guides you through all the steps. In English! It’s a bit annoying that you have to re-enter your passport number and re-scan the JR Pass every time because you can only make one reservation at a time. When I was through with the bookings, I knew my passport number inside out!

Marunouchi

Before continuing to Setagaya, I traipsed a bit around, from the station’s main square through the surrounding streets. The huge skyscrapers didn’t appeal to me, though. And I didn’t have enough time to explore the area in detail. So I just took a few pictures and planned to maybe visit the gardens of the Imperial Palace on another day.

Pictures – click on the photo for more information:

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