a day in transit in Tokyo

No sooner was I back from Nicaragua than I had to fly to Bangkok - not an easy trip to do from Panama on an NGO budget.  Going via Europe was too expensive, and routes going the other way, over the Pacific, all involved a couple of nights in different cities or airports on the way there.  To my great good fortune, however, the cheapest of these flights was the Panama-Atlanta-Seattle-Tokyo-Bangkok route - with two nights in Tokyo!!  Having never been to Japan before I was very excited.

I tried to make the most of my day by getting up very early (not difficult given the jetlag) and starting off at the fish market.  Unfortunately it seems neither the tuna auctions nor the general fish wholesale market are now open to tourists, but I was able to get a very tasty bowl of various types of super fresh sashimi in one of the little local cafes surrounding the market.

From there I went to the Hama-rikyu Gardens, a very peaceful park with skyscrapers on one side and the river on the other.  I took a boat from there to the old district of Asakusa, where I discovered matcha green tea (mmm!) before making my way through the old shopping streets to Sensoji Temple, the oldest temple in Tokyo said to have been built in 628.  It was full of people, Japanese visitors (or were some of them Chinese tourists?) taking photos of the shrine as well as praying to Buddha, but it still somehow had a calm and peaceful air.

In the afternoon I moved on to the National Museum, which had an excellent collection from all around Asia as well as from Japan itself.  I ended up spending three hours in there - after which exhaustion kicked in and plans to catch some kind of evening entertainment were shelved.  The next morning's plans were also shelved, or at least thwarted, as I arrived at Yoyogi Park only to be told that the authorities had decided the previous evening to close it because of an infestation of dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

I hadn't known what to expect of Tokyo but really enjoyed my stay there.  It was an intriguing mix of very modern and very traditional.