Walking from Hotel Grand Palace to Hotel New Otani

This is the second post offering walking course suggestions to Tokyo visitors. This one will start again from the Hotel Grand Palace in Chiyoda ward, close to the Kudanshita crossroad. If you happen to stay in the nearby other hotels like Hotel Metropolitan Edmond closer to Iidabashi station, or even the Tokyo Dome Hotel, these walk tours still qualify. The purpose here is not to take you by the hand and indicate every other corner where you should turn and all the little streets you would feel sorry you missed if you knew. For that kind of service, consult the project Walking in Tokyo and come back to me. I assume you are staying in Tokyo with a guide book. You did some homework and consulted a few pages over the Internet. Good. Here is another one that may be a little more usable, I hope. This course was covered in more poetical way here.


From Hotel Grand Palace to Hotel New Otani via the Yasukuni Jinja shrine

This walk is a favorite of mine. Most of the trail follows a dirt walking path lined up with trees in the middle of Tokyo, and mostly safe from the busy traffic. It allows for a unique vista on the city from an unusual perspective. Our first destination is the Yasukuni Jinja shrine. By the way, Jinja means shrine so let me stop vocabulary redundancy starting from here

When you leave the Hotel grand Palace, just go on your right and follow the Meiji Dôri avenue down to the large Kudanshita crossroad. At the crossroad, turn right and start climbing toward the shrine colossal entrance.

Alternative path: after you leave the hotel, immediately turn at the first corner right and clim the steep anonymous slope that goes along the hotel and then the Philippine embassy. Have a look at the beautiful embassy from the outside, then go left, and after you pass under that elevated passageway that belongs to a school, turn right and go straight until the end of the street. The beautiful empty estate mansion you see on the left corner is my dream house in Tokyo.

The controversial shrine is the heart of nationalistic Japan. A visit to the the shrine's web site in English should make clear what is meant here. You can also read this past post.

There are more beautiful shrines in Japan than Yasukuni. But this one is especially interesting from a social point of view. Behind the central building after the majestic gate is a nice garden and a place where sumo is performed for free a few times during the year. The war museums are the incongruity of the place. Watching the people around is also part of the interesting things to do when in Yasukuni.

Leave the shrine from the side exit that is on you left when you look at the center shrine building just before you enter its precinct. The shady exit guarded by two stone lions is beautiful. Turn immediately right and follow the long shrine wall. At the first corner, turn right and follow the path that goes along the shrine's outer limit. When you come to the end of that street, go left and walk for two minutes until you reach a crossroad where a bridge pass over the railway track and the Sotobori moat. Do not cross the bridge but find your way to the strip of garden that follows the moat on the upper left side.

From now one, we will walk mostly on that elevated garden strip. Before we reach Ichigaya station, the strip ends with a small playground for kids where kids are a rarity. Go forward, past a subway entrance and cross the road just before the bridge to bum into Ichigaya station.

In front of the station entrance, turn left and walk around the right corner of the station building. Our mission is to find out where the garden strip we left starts again. If you have any sense of direction, this will be easy. After you turned right, you start climbing a street you will leave at the first opportunity at right to follow a lane that tries and go along the railway track down under. You will find the tiny staircase that props you up, back to that garden strip.

We are now leisurely walking toward Yotsuya station. When you reach there, the strip ends again and you will have to find it again after you cross the large avenue that passes along the Sophia university. I will skip all the interesting vistas you will enjoy along the way. The end of the track brings you somewhere on the left to the back of the Hotel New Otani. Follow the direction of the track you left, passing through the hotel backstage, along the hotel pool. You will enter without much knowing it the incredibly beautiful hotel Japanese garden with enticing restaurants, gorgeous pond and fishes. The best way to leave the hotel is first to get inside it.

The closest subway station from the hotel is Nagatachô. You can go back to the hotel by boarding the Hanzômon line to Kudanshita station which is the second stop.

A non stop-walk from the Hotel Grand Palace down to the Hotel New Otani via Yasukuni shrine would take one hour and a half. With all the things to see along the trail, three hours should be a minimum.

If you ever use this course overview, leave me your impressions and tell me whether it was useful.