Showa Day

Showa Day, named after the Showa Emperor who died in 1989, marks the start of Golden Week in Japan. Many people have this week off as there are public holidays at the end of the week too, running into the weekend; this includes Andrew as his company is closed for the week.

It also means that many places, especially tourist spots, are quite busy as was the case of the Tokyo Skytree. We visited the place this afternoon, but decided not to wait to go up the tower as the earliest time slot was seven thirty. There is a huge shopping mall with restaurants making up part of the complex, plus an aquarium. We had coffee at the 100% Chocolate Cafe which can serve up any of 56 different types of chocolate either as drinks or bars to eat. There was a queue for seats inside.

Pete and I had met Andrew and Noriko, plus Kio of course, at Nihombashi, an area of Tokyo I had not been to before. There is a very attractive bridge over the river there with decorative dragon and lion statues. They also run boat trips from the jetty. This is a very interesting area and we had lunch at a traditional Japanese restaurant overlooking the river.

Unfortunately the town planners decided to run a motorway along the length of the river and over the bridge. But as can be seen from the picture, they split the road at this point so as not to disturb the lamppost with the dragon statues.