The current residence of the Japanese Imperial family, the Palace is situated on the former Edo Castle site and consists of the Imperial Palace and the Imperial East Garden. Unfortunately, being a Sunday guided tours weren't available, so the garden and the plaza in front of the Palace were my best options. The weather was also quite bleak (misty spring rain) which made photography challenging, but as they say, you can't control the weather.

From the plaza, two bridges both adorned with ornamental lamps are visible and lead to the Imperial Palace private residence. Though both bridges are strictly off-limits to the public, they are however extremely popular with tourists. The first and perhaps the most famous bridge in Tokyo is the Nijubashi or Imperial Palace Main Gate Stone Bridge and the is second the Tetsubashi or Imperial Palace Main Gate Iron Bridge.

Interestingly, when I Google mapped the bridges, the Iron Bridge is actually labelled as Nijubashi, which caused me a great deal of confusion and it was only after doing a little digging around that I found out historically Nijubashi was the nickname of the present day Iron Bridge. When the original bridge was replaced with the iron structure, Nijubashi then became associated with the now famous Stone Bridge. A bit of a brain twister...but I think that's how the story went in short.