Walk, Ochanomizu

 
Ochanomizu means tea water. Lines of bicycles indicate the train station is near.

Alley, Shibuya

 

Biker, Higashi Shinjuku

 

Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Bay

 
Most wouldn't think to walk across the Rainbow Bridge, and almost nobody does it. In this paternalistic land one is surprised to find it even permitted, inhospitable as the journey is. After walking from an obscure station through a practically deserted waterfront warehouse district, one climbs and begins the wind-buffeted, roughly 1km passage with a nearly constant assault of passing trucks on one side (shaking the bridge and causing the photographer to emit a stream of oaths into the din) and the vertiginous drop into the bay on the other. But the views are wholly unique. It is for each to decide if this is just a very bad idea or one of the rare free and solitary pleasures of Tokyo.

Outer Grounds, Imperial Palace

 

That this huge area, certainly the most expensive real estate in the world if it were ever considered in such crass commercial terms, remains sacrosanct reveals much about how the idea of the Emperor is viewed in Japan. None of the talk of anachronism and abolishing the monarchy, so common in Britain, is heard here. People see it, rather, as not only a valuable connection with the past but part of their collective identity.
That a line can at least be drawn here, though elsewhere in the city kitsch has triumphed and everything seems for sale, is in a way admirable. The matsu, pine trees, around the palace grounds surely present one of the most beautiful sights in Tokyo.

Asakusa

 

Snow Storm, Imperial Palace Wall

 

"The centre of the capital still proclaims its origins. There sits the Imperial Palace, ubiquitous, directly in the centre, built on the site of Edo Castle. This is what the visitor sees as old Japan; this is what the resident must go around on the way home. It is the hub of the city, its core. (...)
"Grey stone walls, which in Greece would be called cyclopean, a few turrets, one of which is said to contain elements of the original castle, groves of pine and a recent swan in the ancient moat - all of this in the midst of grey Tokyo creates a metaphor."
- Donald Richie