After leaving what we all agreed was the second best
hotel we stayed in over the entire trip, the Hotel Emion at Tokyo Bay (first
being quite a discussion, but my favourite was the wonderfully picturesque hotel we stayed at up
in the mountains near Mt Fuji), we headed into
town to one of the most popular tourist attractions, the Tokyo Skytree.
Nearly
700m high you get a sense of how large Tokyo is once you’re up in the sky
decks of this unbelievable structure. Many of the photos on Flickr will show
you the length and breath of this wonderful city that holds 24 million people,
Which is unbelievable considering Australia only has 26 million for the whole
of the country. Up there the boys enjoyed a few hours of just walking around in
viewing out of the windows trying to pick landmarks that we have been to and
trying to through the smog (or as they say 'fog'), Mount Fuji. Unfortunately I was
unable to be seen on this day because of the haze.
We left there and headed down into Asakusa, another
famous area in Tokyo that host one of the most magnificent temples in Tokyo
itself. The Sensoji Temple and gardens are a wonderful representation of
ancient Japan and their religion. Surrounding this enormous temple is some
beautiful gardens and also markets food halls and other variety shops that
gives this whole area quite a buzz. We were lucky enough to also meet a number
of students from the local university that graduated that day and in tradition, they wore kimonos to pray in the temple. Such a lovely sense of tradition and modern customs.
After a few hours of exploring this area we hopped into
the bus and finally headed towards Narita airport for our flight home. With
many other boys very excited about heading home not many did get too much sleep
even though it had been a very tiring week, most stayed up and watch the videos most of
the flight home.
Some big thank you’s for the entire trip for;
* firstly to
see Shiv Maguire for all her wonderful organisation prior to us leaving and
insuring that we had ticked all the boxes and everything ready to go for this
trip.
* Secondly a huge thank you to the coaches Adrian Blundell, Grant
Anderson’, Greg Norman, Leigh Holtsbaum, and physio Matt Brown. Thank you for
their professionalism and their assistance during this wonderful trip.
* Finally
I’d like to thank also the parents and the boys for all of their help and
support, prior, and during this trip. From the wonderful fundraising lunches,
to the rugby supporters group that helped us and to all of those that did their
bit in part to make sure this trip was sucked a success. Personally I’d like to
thank you all for the opportunity to meet you, and work along side to make this a wonderful experience for the boys.
Now we move on to France 2023..... get your name in fast for
another wonderful trip. :)
Thank you for reading this blog, hope you have enjoyed it and the photos..... over and out
Best regards,
Ian Browne
