Overnight Rail Trip to Tokyo

After finishing a photo shoot of Kyoto's Aoi Matsuri procession/festival on Saturday, we rode the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo in the afternoon - a nice smooth 3 -hour ride.

Our hotel was just a few blocks from the downtown train station so we got settled in there briefly then grabbed dinner at a nearby Sushi bar.  The quality and variety of sushi at the bar was amazing-  have never had anything that came close at any other time/place.  While at the bar,we chatted/drank saki with some locals - a group of businessmen - one of them had spent several years in the U.S. and spoke near-perfect English

We finished dinner and headed out onto the street to visually capture life in Tokyo after dark.  We weren't at all disappointed - people and neon everywhere on a busy Saturday night!

Got up early Sunday and after breakfast at the hotel, we took the subway up to the Asakusa District, northeast of downtown to watch/photograph a procession/festival.  Following that, we visited the Sensoji Temple and gardens for photos and got additional pictures in surrounding markets and business areas.

While walking around we came across a poster for the Himiko river ferry - an ultra-modern boat that we thought might be a good way to do some sightseeing along the Tokyo waterfront.  The boat took us down the river toward downtown and across Tokyo Bay where we disembarked onto an island/park area where we got lots of more photos.

From there we rode the subway back downtown for some more shots of Tokyo's spectacular architecture - wow!  After that we headed north by subway to the Tokyo Tower, a steel 1100-ft high Eiffel-like structure built in 1958.  We shot lots of photos from the 500-foot observation deck.

Following that, we travelled by subway and train back "home" to JCMU in Hikone.  A whirlwind trip and great fun!