Asakusa (浅草)

After waking up so early, I tried to keep resting in the hotel room, knowing full well that Tokyo is generally a sleepy city, as well as knowing that the earlier I head out and admit that I'm awake, the earlier I'll presumably crash. But a little after 8 I finally lost patience with the clock to catch up, and left. I thought I'd start off with the Shinjuku garden as a nice warm up to the day, and promptly discovered that it doesn't open till 9. So ... still too early.

The temperature today got up to a whooping "feels like" 40 degrees today. It was already over 30 degrees by the time I left at 8 and walking around a great big park with lots of space to walk while being blasted by sunlight, may not have been the smartest idea. And of course, if you duck into anything with air-conditioning, you immediately get frost bite. This ... is not making it easy to find  a comfortable temperature ...

Today took me to Asakusa, primarily because they have boats that go to Odaiba. There's definitely easier and cheaper ways to get to Odaiba, and I certainly made use of those on the way back, but it seemed like a nice idea. Especially after walking for most of the morning and trying to get a heat stroke. By the time I arrived though, the only boat to Odaiba which hadn't sold out was the 17:30 one. So I had some time to kill in Asakusa.

Now, I have a tendancy that if I see a flow of people, I assume that they know something good that I don't, and start making sheep noises. And boy did I find them all. Hundreds of stalls, and every tourist you can imagine crowding the strip before the temple. Which means I can now check off 'see other tourists' from my todo list for Japan and totally don't have to do something similar for the rest of the time. Right?

It's nice to see that there still appears to be a pretty serious photography scene in Tokyo. In the park, it looked like there was some modelling for wedding dresses happening. In Odaiba, you had a three person team holding up lights and coordinating to be able to take night pictures of the happy wedding couple in front of the rainbow bridge. The picture above was in Asakusa with seemingly little background for the picture, but a girl who seemed to radiate so much excitement that I didn't even spot the camera guy at first. That said, I took a quick peak in one of the camera shops and ... yeah, the camera equipment is just as prohibitively expensive here as it is elsewhere ...

I'm not too sure I can actually recommend the boat tour. Possibly because by the time the boat started, I was yet again ready to fall asleep upright, but also because cruising along the Sumida river doesn't offer a heck of a lot that you can't see from the shore. The only real fun part came at the end when heading towards the more open waters between the mainland and Odaiba. The breeze from the boat, combined with the evening sun was nice though in terms of finally getting a little bit of a break from the heat.

And then of course, you get what still easily counts as one of my favourite views in Tokyo: looking back at Tokyo from Odaiba, with the Rainbow bridge. Which I got to enjoy, again, along with 700 other people. At least this seemed less touristy than Asakusa and more just the locals also enjoying the view as well as being able to dip their toes into what internationally counts as a pretty decent beach. Presumably if there had been any Australians about, they would have just thrown themselves into the water.

Watching the night sky past the sunset also seemed to bring a slightly worrying view though: lightning off in the distance. A threat which is also reflected in the forecast for the upcoming week ... Well, I guess my old umbrella is semi-broken so this might give me a good excuse to get a new one. And while it talks about a little bit of rain, at least it doesn't seem to be affecting the temperature nearly as badly as it did in Europe. Guess we'll just have to wait and see ...

(Whoo, wrote the blog in the evening. 21 hours of being awake after not having had a proper nights sleep in days is brutal though. Hopefully by going to bed at the proper time, my body will finally reset me to the correct timezone, as opposed to heading off to Alaska or something...)