On our second day in Tokyo, we decided that some kind of “big” tour would be advisable, just to get oriented to a broader area of the city. So this one was perfect not only because it was over by 12:30 pm and left us by the Tokyo Station, but also because the bus took us to two central locations (the Tokyo Tower and the Imperial Palace site, to walk outside), and then to one major site farther out from the center, the Asakusa Kannon Temple, not just the holy site but also the extremely busy market streets all around. An added bonus was that the bus tour allowed us to see, from the bus as we moved back inward, a broad range of neighborhoods, from the Ueno Station (where we would later return several times to visit the museums and the zoo), the Akihabara shopping area and inward to Nakamise.
Our guide, Junko, was truly superb, with a very colloquial English and very clear instructions about meeting, times, etc. She also provided an enormous amount of historical and social information about Tokyo as we moved about the city. One extraordinary treat for us, at the Tokyo Tower, was to be able to see off in the distance VERY clearly Mount Fuji, and to get some very nice picture of it. Junko was over the moon about this since the visibility is rarely as clear as this. The Imperial Palace portion was mainly a nice walk, since there are only a very few locations on the Palace grounds that one can enter, and that was not part of the tour, thankfully. The Asakusa Temple visit was really an eyeful, not just at the very crowded temple site itself, but the throngs of people in the streets all around. We got off the main streets to explore a bit, and even found a gelato store, but were almost late for the bus! In any case, we found ourselves on Sunday noon at the main train station, but near the open Post Office, and near several shopping centers where we found a food court and lots of activity as well. All in all, this tour was exactly what we wanted.