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Published: March 20th 2019
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After a 10 hour flight we landed at Narita Airport and once through immigration found our way eventually to our hotel - some 3.5 hours later. The highly praised train network let us down first by being late, would you believe and then by terminating before our stop so we had to find another route round. Good job we weren’t on a schedule!
Next morning after a strange mixture for breakfast we walked to the Tsukiji fish market. Originally the main fish market this now hosts mainly retail fish establishments and food stalls and wandering round watching folks eating squid, fish or fruit on a stick was a little strange for us. Sue decided to try the fruit one. It had a strawberry on top of a pink yoghurt casing wrapped with pink rice paper - partway through she found the raw fish!! An interesting experience all round.
Then it was time to visit the Shibuya Crossing, one of the business pedestrian intersections in the world. Very busy and great to watch folk crossing but as it was still grey it wasn’t great for photos - we would be back another day.
Clearly Sue was missing her
culture fix so off we started on the art gallery run - something we hadn’t done for a while. First port of call the Ginza Graphic design gallery which was showcasing work by Paula Scher an ad designer from the US - not bothered too much with her art but her ad campaigns were interesting and I liked ‘patents’ which showed various useless inventions patented in 2009.
Next stop the Fuji Film gallery, the Art museum, the Harajuku art village and then the design festa gallery where we met an art teacher from Sheffield and his students. For supper we had Mexican!
Next day was dank and grey (again) and intermittently wet so we thought we would hit a few places where if it rained we could be inside. First stop was the Nakagin Capsule Tower which was the worlds first example of capsule architecture built for permanent use.
Then as we wandered to the Mori art museum we passed the Ghibli clock which is the largest clockwork cuckoo and tin soldier clock in the world apparently. Unfortunately we weren’t there at the right time to see the movements. Then up to the 53rd floor of the
Mori Tower - both to get the view of a grey Tokyo with clouds coming in and to visit the art museum which was worth going to.
As it was raining again we shot back across to the Shibuya Crossing and headed for a different vantage point where we could look down from the 7th floor onto the heaving mass of people below. And this time the umbrellas were out! Great opportunity for photos and video.
As evening drew in we then went to the Skytree to get another high view of Tokyo, this time in the dark and in a different area - Shiduku. It’s a great viewpoint and there is something about looking down at a city at night that is almost magical.
Then back for dinner ( Vietnamese this time) and bed.
After a couple of drab days we decided to get out of Tokyo and went to Kamakura which was an older town about an hour away on the JR line. Temples and shrines abounded and the sun shone which made a huge difference. As we visited the temples and walked through the town we started to see many young girls in
traditional dress. We later found out that most wear the outfits when visiting shrines to get good instagram pictures.
We hit a number of the shrines and temples including Emma’s wish, Kamakura emoji temple, Kenccho-Ji temple
First shrine???
We saw some cars parked in a kind of lay-by being blessed!
We also walked round the town and found the Big Buddha before heading back into Tokyo for dinner in a craft beer bar just round the corner from the hotel and on the street where the blossom trees were already blooming.
Next morning we checked out of the hotel as we were off to Kyoto on the Bullet train or Shinkansen later that afternoon.
However we still had time to head over to the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum which had, amongst other offerings, an exhibition on the impact of British photographers from the Victoria era on the world of photography and in particular in Japan - really interesting to read about the start point of photography and its broader take up as an art form in this way.
On our way there we stopped at a small market that was being opened as we passed and
spoke to this young woman about thee Fukushima prefecture. After chatting for about 10 minutes we remarked on her brilliant English which is when she said that’s because I am English and live in Reading! She was over on a work visa. Her mother was Japanese.
As we headed back from the art museum along one of the streets we could hear piped music and after a while realised it was coming from the speakers embedded in the lamppost. It was a little surreal to be hearing Elvis and then Cliff Richard as we walked down a Japanese street - not what we were expecting.
And now we were done in Tokyo for a while and off to Kyoto.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Off season travel
Looks like this is a good time of year to travel to Japan. Elvis is every where!