Nine Bridges

By the time Mom had arrived in Japan following her flight delay, the JR office in the airport had already closed for the night. We had each bought a JR Pass, a special ticket issued by Japan Rail allowing for unlimited train travel on all JR trains, including Shinkansen bullet trains, for the 14-day duration.

I had picked up and activated my rail pass at the airport during my very long wait a few days before, but we still needed to get Mom's pass before leaving Tokyo, so on the morning of our second full day in Japan we headed out to Ueno Station to visit the JR office. A few minutes later, pass in hand, we sat down at a little cafe bakery inside the station to make a plan for the day.

We decided to take a leisurely day. We were both still tired from our travels and wanted to make sure we were feeling great by the time we left Tokyo.

In the morning, we decided to take a walk through Ueno Park, one of my favorite places in Tokyo. I've visited before when the sakura were blooming, but on this day, it was hot and muggy, a typical Japanese summer morning.

We decided to stop in at a small restaurant across the street from our hotel for lunch. It turned out to be a miso shop and mini supermarket specializing in sauces and condiments with a small, attached lunch counter. The menu was entirely in Japanese, so Mom and I had to use Google Translate to figure out how to place our order. This ended up being a really great meal.

We each ordered a lunch set, which came with rice, a side of meat with sauce, pickled cabbages, and a seaweed and bean salad. Of course, the main course was a big, hearty bowl of miso soup filled with lots of healthy ingredients like mushrooms, tofu, and veggies.

The Sumida River cuts through Tokyo and has long been the subject of numerous paintings, poems, and performances. Today, a large but relatively quiet waterway, the river flows 27 kilometers through the heart of the city, past the Imperial Palace, and out to Tokyo Bay.

We had booked tickets for a river cruise for the afternoon, and after lunch we made our way to the dock to board our boat.

We had booked a 50-minute round-trip tour called the "Nine Bridges Tour" which, as the name suggests, passes beneath nine of Tokyo's 26 Sumida River bridges.

It was a warm, sunny day, but we stood up on the boat's deck, and the breeze as we cruised down the Sumida River felt really nice. This was a new way to experience Tokyo from a perspective I had never seen before.

Occasionally the captain would make an announcement in Japanese as we passed underneath one of the bridges. I assume the information was about the bridge and maybe its history, but of course I couldn't understand it. Each time, a guy carrying a laminated photo of the bridge along with its name in English would pop up to let us know where we were, which I thought was a really thoughtful gesture for the non-Japanese speaking tourists on board.