Tokyo: Day 4

The old fish market

A warm sunny day!  No umbrellas required.  Our first stop was the old fish market.  Not much fish being traded now but a maze of little stalls selling every conceivable kind of fish product, fresh and dried and seaweeds etc.   From there we navigated our way to the Hama Rikyu Gardens.  I say navigated because the roads were in turmoil with building work and barriers on all sides.

Fish stall with crabs

We assume there is little unemployment in Japan.  We have noticed the number of staff on duty and attentive in stores, especially department stores where you are greeted by everyone.  This level of staffing also seems to apply to road works.  There were three people on duty by an exit from a building site to control pedestrians and lorries going in and out and even two impeccably turned out people beside a minor coned deviation for pedestrians bowing us on and off the pavement.

Fresh fruit confections

Back to the gardens.  They were laid out in the Edo era and contain many old and elegant trees of various kinds, including cherry, tonsured shrubs, camellias and roses.  There was a lot of work going on here too, with paths roped off and digging and sweeping.   There were no flower beds, except for one area labelled flower garden which, to our amusement, contained a field of rape in flower.  People were taking photographs and getting quite excited.   The gardens are surrounded by skyscrapers creating interesting contrasts.

Cherry blossom

View across the river from Hama Rikyu Gardens

In Hama Rikyu Gardens

A little bit of cherry blossom

Contrasts

Wisteria bridge

More contrasts

Assemble pottery project

From the gardens we made our way to the Ginza shopping district to track down a craft shop that might be a source of ramen bowls.  Sadly there was nothing there we liked but on the way we passed an intriguing advert on the side of a building advertising a group of architects...We investigated and took some elegant wooden stairs down to a pottery project set up by Assemble, a group of architects from Liverpool!   They were interested in the pottery that could be made from different soils by the slip casting method - producing simple everyday objects with simple glazes.

Tokyo Rail Station

Peter then wanted to see the main railway station as they are often interesting architecturally, but this one was quite disappointing.

After a breather at the hotel we set off for a restaurant Peter had identified.   A tiny 'mom and pop' outfit with 18 seats doing grilled Wagu beef.  We had to have help finding it from a young woman - my use of Google maps sometimes lets me down - and when we finally did we found that there were no seats until 2 hours later.   We gave up and as Peter's appetite immediately faltered and he didn't feel like eating we compromised and had a very ordinary meal in, of all places, an 'Italian' restaurant and came home disappointed!