A Tokyo morning

We spent a beautiful autumn morning in Tokyo walking through our neighbourhood, Ryoguku, which is home to sumo wrestling – our hotel is right opposite the sumo arena. Unfortunately all the sumos are in Fukuoka for the sumo competition there, so it’s a bit quiet here.

But there are signs everywhere that this area is all about sumo. Lovely paving stones:

Benches with Hokusai’s sketches of sumo wrestlers (he was from this neighbourhood, I understand):

Restaurants cashing in on sumo to advertise themselves:

A rather fetching smoking shed outside the station was full of commuters having their final puffs before going to work – the images of sumo and Mount Fuji didn’t really disguise what they were up to:

There was lots of evidence of the usual themes: cleanliness, cuteness, quiet and order, even though we were in the heart of the city:

Some things were incomprehensible, like these water bottles surrounding this building:

The day was perfect with blue sky and bright leaves:

We needed a rest and found ourselves in a park which was full of groups of very young children and their carers. We particularly liked this bunch of toddlers who were being encouraged to run around by a carer who blew big bubbles for them:

Eventually, they must have been deemed to have had enough exercise as they were piled into the carts to be taken back:

Various other groups of kids appeared including one lot with little plastic bags. We thought they’d been brought to pick up rubbish but Sue decided they were collecting leaves:

We left the park to continue our walk and found ourselves with more enchanting paving stones, confirming that this area is really popular with carers and children:

We finally descended into the transport system, only to see the perfect sign which needs to be adopted by TfL:

We ended up at the beautiful National Art Centre, a wonderful building but we didn’t fancy an exhibition on Bulgari so we just had lunch and visited the shop instead, which was pretty wonderful.

.Tomorrow is our last day – we fly in the evening – and it’s predicted to rain, but we have a plan! So watch this space for our sign-off.