I also heard that the fish market is closed to the public. My wife drug me there at 4 am, but frankly I wasn’t that impressed.
Climbing Mt Fuji is a great experience, but the climbing season is short (early July to mid Aug). Most groups start at station 5 (about 7,500 ft elevation) and climb from there, but if you’re up for more punishment you can start at the base. A round trip from station 5 took us 12 hours with about 2 hrs on top, but we weren’t setting any speed records. There were ultra-marathoners who I saw running up the trail, but I was on a different program. There are “hotels” near the top, and many Japanese plan their climbs to be at the summit at sunrise. The Japanese say that "One who never climbs Mount Fuji is a fool, and one who climbs twice is twice the fool." My wife and I had a great experience climbing and at the risk of being twice the fool, it’s something I would consider doing again if I had the time.
I highly recommend the Edo Tokyo Museum. You can get an English speaking tour guide for free and will likely spend several hours going through the museum. If you were ever interested in samurai culture, you don’t want to miss this. The museum covers the late Meiji period up to WWII (roughly the past 400 yrs) and deals with the transition from feudalism to industrialism. The museum is Smithsonian quality or better, and you’ll be in awe of all the craftsmanship that went into the displays.
Last time I was in Tokyo I had just finished reading several books about the Kamikaze pilots, so I drug my wife to Yasukuni Shrine. It’s a Shinto shrine where they believe the souls of the military dead rest. The shrine also has a museum called Yushukan that includes several WWII aircraft (I’m an avid aviator) and assorted equipment. They even have a locomotive that was used on the Burma-Siam Railway. I was really interested to see the Kamikaze craft: manned torpedos, mini subs, divers, airplanes, and the Oka flying bomb. (There are still concrete shelters for the Okas not far from my home in Okinawa.) After reading stories from surviving Kamikazes, I had to see these things first hand.
The Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and Meiji Jingu are two parks you should make time for. The Japanese make gardening an art form, and you really need to see some of it to appreciate what they can do.
Next time I'm in Tokyo I'm going to have turtle soup and Fugu (poisonous puffer fish), but I'm a bit of a foodie and those are two entrees on my bucket list that I can't get in Okinawa. But even for the less adventurous there are many great places to eat, from stand up noodle bars to five star restaurants. You should try as much as you dare to eat. All food and water in Japan is safe for westerners, but there are cultural differences in what they consider palatable. Being a nation of islands, sea food figures prominently in their diet. I remember as a kid reading stories of American POWs being fed seaweed soup during WWII, and I thought it was disgusting as visions of the algae in my local pond came to mind. Now, I love all kinds of seaweed. Personally, I think it has more to do with how we associate it and what we call it than anything else. There are many seaweed farms in the surrounding waters, and they grow a variety of plants. When I’ve had friends come to visit I tell them it’s “sea vegetables” and that somehow makes it more palatable. Once you get over the unfamiliar textures and concepts, you’ll find food in Japan is both beautiful and delicious.
