An Intimate Viewing Of The Impressionists...

It was a beautiful day and so on the spur of the moment we decided to head into Tokyo - the process is much easier now our train line actually goes through Tokyo station - Yeah!

Tokyo station is somewhat iconic with it's red brickwork - very unusual in this neck of the world!

We started at the gallery which was showing a collection of impressionist painting, many of them were quite small and so there was no barrier and you could get up close and personal, which was great when it came to talking about the brush strokes and the colours the artists used.

Ebi-kun is getting quite a keen eye and picked out a Monet from across the room then started to see the patterns so he could figure out which were Degas, Manet and Gauguin. He got excited when he spotted a painting from Katie and The Impressionists book and re-told the story to me.

He was also blown away at the 'splodges' that from a distance looked like people or boats etc. There was an old fella watching Ebi-kun who was obviously intrigued at this kid getting excited over the paintings!

The gallery overlooks this lovely little courtyard, quite hard to believe you are in the centre of Tokyo!

We decided to pick up a bento and eat it in the courtyard, big buildings and beautiful blue skies...

Then we decided to have a walk over to the Imperial palace, love this shot of Giant Ebi-kun! With all the office building behind him. It's exceptionally clean in this part of Tokyo, we didn't spot any litter at all and there was a complete lack of bins.

Our next activity was watching tourists getting told off for going over the fence to get photos under the cherry blossom trees, one would have thought this was the only place in Japan with cherry blossom trees! We stayed on the right side of the fence!

And of course, the obligatory sakura shot...