It is funny how time changes things. I remember Sunday December 7, 1941. That was when my parents and some friends were huddled around the radio. It was Pearl Harbour Day. Our Mom and Dad were very good in protecting sister Moe and I from any bad news regarding the war. [I could never remember who was the Axis and who were the Allies! I was six, Moe 8.]
And who would have thought that today, 78 years later, we would be sailing into Tokyo Bay, me with a wife who was six months old on Pearl Harbour Day?
We had two lectures before lunch and after lunch boarded the buses for the Included Tour of Tokyo. It was underwhelming! We are no a fan of big cities and Tokyo has over 13,000,000 in the city proper, and we were told, that Tokyo Metro has about 33,000,000. That is the population of Canada for gosh sake. All on a string of Islands about the size of New Zealand.
I must congratulate the Japanese however, they sure do a good job of keeping the area clean and somehow disguising where all those people are!
We drove by most sites and they were usually hidden by large trees or lost in a maze of other concrete structures or, on the wrong side of the bus. There does not seem to be any urban areas left here, it is all built up. Very neat mind you, but built up.
In the morning and at lunch I felt a bit sorry for the 800 passengers getting off tomorrow morning as the cruise ends for them in Tokyo. This afternoon after our tour I was beginning to envy them if the rest of Japan is like the Tokyo that we saw today.
Mind you, when at the one stop near the Emperor's Palace, Viking dropped about 700 people off within 40 minutes. It would have been a nice place to stroll if there were 698 less people there!
We were back on the ship by five. After a shower and a drink, life did not seem so bad!
Two more nights on the ship moored in Tokyo.
We had two lectures before lunch and after lunch boarded the buses for the Included Tour of Tokyo. It was underwhelming! We are no a fan of big cities and Tokyo has over 13,000,000 in the city proper, and we were told, that Tokyo Metro has about 33,000,000. That is the population of Canada for gosh sake. All on a string of Islands about the size of New Zealand.
I must congratulate the Japanese however, they sure do a good job of keeping the area clean and somehow disguising where all those people are!
We drove by most sites and they were usually hidden by large trees or lost in a maze of other concrete structures or, on the wrong side of the bus. There does not seem to be any urban areas left here, it is all built up. Very neat mind you, but built up.
In the morning and at lunch I felt a bit sorry for the 800 passengers getting off tomorrow morning as the cruise ends for them in Tokyo. This afternoon after our tour I was beginning to envy them if the rest of Japan is like the Tokyo that we saw today.
Mind you, when at the one stop near the Emperor's Palace, Viking dropped about 700 people off within 40 minutes. It would have been a nice place to stroll if there were 698 less people there!
We were back on the ship by five. After a shower and a drink, life did not seem so bad!
Two more nights on the ship moored in Tokyo.
A pause on our morning walk for a picture, to show you that we do relax.
[Photo time allowed was less than a minute!]
Coming into Big T.
Nothing but modern...
A very well kept park of only mature pine trees, pruned like Bonsai.
A Shogun of days gone by. No war heroes statues here!
A building in the grounds of the Emperor's Palace.
I had to linger for about 10 minutes to exclude other people posing here.
This is the moat that surrounds the Emperor's Palace, the grounds must be about a kilometre square.
New construction of apartments for the Athletes at the 2020 Olympics. There is more construction going on in Tokyo right now that in all of BC I feel. You can sense that the economy is booming.
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