Tokyo & the Imperial Palace

This post is a relatively short one as I've posted a lot of the highlights from my first weekend in Tokyo in previous posts.  What is left for me to show you are some of the other sights that caught my eye, and a few pictures from my wandering around the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

Believe it or not, this building is actually a dry cleaners, replete with automated rails to move the clothes around and from the ground floor up to the floor.

This was a view I caught of one of the exhibition spaces in the Tokyo Exhibition centre.  I really like the engineering of the support columns, and how the image was so washed out because it was photographed through one of the sun-blinds.  Its actually a colour image.

This critter was spotted outside a shop.  Great 'tache.

This fantastic building is Shisei Kaikan, during the war it housed the Japanese state news agency, but these days it functions as the Hibiya town hall.  Sat right in the centre of Tokyo, next to Hibiya park, its gothic architecture is a real stand out feature.  That coupled with the beautiful red-orange brick it is constructed from makes it really pop next to the greens of the park, and the greys of the surrounding buildings.

• (To try and show off the colours of the bricks I've bumped up the saturation of this image from its original as the light was so bright that the colours were a bit washed out).

The Imperial Palace

The Imperial Palace is another oasis of calm and green in the metropolitan heart of Tokyo.  Surrounded by a huge park, its great to get away.

• (I bumped up the green levels at the low end on this shot to try and re-capture the vibrancy of the trees.  To balance that and prevent the whole picture having a green tint I had to up the red and blue levels at the high end, by lucky chance its given it a quite retro look).

The ancient buildings of the palace set against the towers of Tokyo offer great perspective.

The whole complex is walled and moated.  The skill of the stone-masons to get the blocks to join so precisely is incredible.  Although a lot of the walls have been restored recently, they've used traditional techniques and many of the stones remain the originals.

The hinges on the main entrance were gigantic.  Those pin and barrel joints must be about 30 cm across.

Akihabara and Gundam

Yep, Japan is a bit of a hobby mecca (as long as you mean playing with models and toys, and like Gundam that is).  Even the local chain of electronics stores - Yamada Denki, has racks and racks of Gundam models for you to buy and build.

This song plays near continuously in the shop.

How the staff don't go postal by the end of the day I don't know.

They can even make selling fridges seem somewhat more exciting.  I promise you there really are fridges underneath all those stickers.

Of course, the best place to go if you are anything like me is Akihabara - Tokyo's electronics town.  Akihabara started life as a district where the Japanese and US military were selling off spare electronics parts after the second world war.  Local students used to buy up the parts and make radios out of them to sell on and earn money to fund their studies.  Ever since it has been synonymous with the sale of electronic goods.  It really gained its reputation in the 80s and 90s when it was a one stop shop for tourists and locals alike to get the latest electronic gadgets at knock down prices, often long before they appeared in the local shops, and years before they reached the rest of the world.

Nowadays, with the growing prevalence of tech in the west, and apps on smartphones taking the place of many of the little gadgets that used to be sold, Akihabara has shifted its focus away from electronics (don't worry, you can still find loads) to other aspects of Japanese culture, namely manga and collectibles.  If anything, its made the place even more colourful than before.

 

Even the graffiti and the bikes are more colourful in Akihabara.

 

Back to Yamada Denki and the Gundam - just look at how many kits there were, and this was only a single set of shelves, there were at least 4 full racks just of Gundam, and that's not even mentioning the other racks of models.

There was even a Unicorn Gundam - in unicorn mode no less.

Well I couldn't rightly pass up such an opportunity, so after a lot of umming and ahhing, I settled on the basic, original Gundam.

They come as two parts, a fully poseable inner skeleton of parts, and then the outer armour additions.  Its all on separate sprues of appropriately coloured plastic so I won't even have to paint it, and there's a full set of transfers too.  Awesome, can't wait to build this guy.

 

Mind you, should you ever feel the need to re-paint any of your Gundam, or build and paint any of the other models that were available, you wouldn't be short of supplies:

 

Or, if collectibles is more your thing, then there were plenty of places to pick up just about anything you could think of, and some things that I kind of wish they hadn't thought of.  If you are ever in need of being weirded out, do a little research into the culture of doll ownership in Japan - let me just tell you that they are FULLY customisable and can be found in many of these shops.

Much cooler though was this guy...

 

... and this guy...

 ... if only!

Japan loves trains

Yep, they really do, and wouldn't you if you'd given the world Shinkansen, and had such an extensive and efficient network as they do here.

Its been a real pleasure to use the railway network in and around Tokyo and further afield.  Even the ticketing system just seems to make more sense - there is a flat rate from A to B no matter where that is in the country, you then add on extra money to get from A to B quicker - an express train will add so much, a super-express a bit more, and for long distances, you simply pay an extra charge and you can ride Shinkansen (even Shinkansen has different grades of express!).

Mind you, this beautiful example near to Tokyo station wouldn't quite reach the speeds of the Shinkansen.

Of course, the first train you are likely see will be the Narita Express (NEX).  It's a real brute of a train with a blunt, pug-nosed kind of look and a raised driving compartment.  I think it looks brilliant.

Picture from Wikimedia

A major difference between the way the trains run here to other places I've visited, almost all lines are named and the trains carry those names too.  Often the names will reflect the places or regions the lines visit, but sometimes they are a little more fanciful.

Take this for example:  fast, blue, perhaps it goes around saving poor trapped animals?

What a great name for a train!

This next train displays some fantastic Jap-english.  "Kyushu Railway Company 885.  The Kyushu Limited Express.  Around the Kyushu since 2000".

Check out the floor to ceiling window on the left in the picture below, I bet it gives quite a fun view.

That's another thing, you'll always see the same model of train running the same route, and they are all painted differing colours so they are nice and easy to identify at a distance.

Shinkansen

Of course, no post about the trains of Japan would be complete without the famous Shinkansen.  I got to ride one all the way from Tokyo to Kyushu and it was awesome.

The new model 700 just looks fast with its duck-bill like nose and sweeping lines.

When we arrived in Kyushu I also spotted this poster.  I can only guess its 40 years since Shinkansen reached Kyushu, because its been running in Japan since 1964 making it over 50 years old.  It does demonstrate fantastically how the design of the Shinkansen has evolved over those 50 years.

Have you ever been on a train and the only seats that you can find are facing backwards?  I know this is something that often bothers people, especially those who get travel sick.  I was surprised that all the seats in the Shinkansen always seemed to be facing the direction of travel.  Its not like the trains can be rotated easily, and with a train leaving Tokyo station every 3 minutes it was a bit of a mystery till I saw this:

That's right, every set of seats can rotate individually so that they are always facing the correct direction.  You can see just how quickly the staff go about these changes.  Apparently on average it takes only 7 minutes from a Shinkansen arriving to it being ready to leave again, and that includes cleaning up all the rubbish, rotating every seat, and replacing all the headrest covers.  Its a slick operation thats for sure.



As a final note, I'll just pop this guy in, who I affectionately named the stealth train.  Somehow it just reminds me of the Transformer: Blast Off from my childhood.

Transportation in Japan

Its been quite a journey so far both getting to Japan and also getting around Japan.  I've tried to capture some of my transportation highlights so far, in roughly chronological order.

I was lucky enough to fly on one of Etihad's nice new A380's out of Heathrow.  One of my favourite features was the tail mounted camera that allowed you to see the plane and where it was heading.  That coupled with a second mini-display in the video system controller meant you really were able to know everything about the journey.

Cool though it was, I don't think I would ever have believed the transport that I found in the next town over from where I am staying.

Yep, that's right, not only is it a monorail, but its a suspended monorail!  This wonder of technology can be found in and around Chiba.  Riding it really makes you feel like you are flying through the town, and it gives commanding views of the surroundings.  It was awesome.

Here it is coming in "to land", and below you can see the carriage, its almost a perfect upside down version of a regular train.  I was wondering if I'd have to flip myself around once I was onboard.

Mind you, not everything is super high tech here.  Quite literally within 20 meters of getting off the monorail I found this beautiful old pickup parked in the street.  It is an actual collection and delivery vehicle for a little local repair shop that specialises in vintage motors.  It was such an amazing juxtaposition with the monorail tracks spanning overhead.

Although you can't see it, it'd obviously just got back from a collection as sitting in the back was a rusted up old scooter waiting for restoration.

It wasn't the only old classic I saw either, earlier that day I'd seen this lovely little Mini waiting outside a restaurant.

Tokyo

Tokyo is an incredible city.  Huge, cozy, busy, beautiful, restrained, and out there.  I'll be posting a lot more of what I've seen there soon, but for transport...

For oddity, not much could really compare to this beauty that was driving around the streets on my first weekend.  I think there's a Fiat 500 hiding under all that, but who can tell with so much yellow :D

A less mechanical horse, although you wouldn't get very far on it, this is a previous emperor in the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

Or the modern equivalent of a horse in the Imperial Palace.

Enlarge that picture, just look at the size of the chainrings on those bikes, they must have 100's of teeth.  Those guys were really having to work to get themselves going.  While I was there, they had closed the main road running through the Imperial Palace gardens, so it was a free run for cyclists, walkers, and runners.  There were 100's of them zipping up and down in total car freedom.  At first I thought there must be a race on as there were so many fantastic bikes on display, but I think the Japanese just really take their cycling seriously (obviously this is somewhere I could fit in).  I saw a lot of nice kit, and a lot of customisation.  One really popular addition was a rear disc-wheel with custom graphics.  I didn't manage to get many photos, but you can see an example below.  There was some seriously cool artwork!

... and finally, I found this old wheeled trading stand such a wonderful object to photograph.  The black and white is all my own doing, it wasn't really that old, but it just seemed fitting.  This was on a street corner on the edge of Ginza, the most upmarket shopping area of all of Tokyo, and a more perfect spot for it I could imagine.

That's all I'll put in here as this post is getting really rather long already.  My next post should be about what is possibly the most defining of Japan's methods of transportation, its trains.  I love trains so its been a real highlight already.