Tokyo Skytree–Urban Sprawl and Fuji-san

There are three pictures in this post, but I’m going to put them after a jump/cut/More tag–whichever your service calls it–so as not to overwhelm people’s feeds.

I’ve also found a photo-resizing app and installed it so I won’t have to post ginormous pics. I won’t claim that it retains the quality very well, as I don’t have a real computer on which to test. After we return, I’ll be processing the photos I took and posting much higher-quality ones.

Anyway. As an earlier post said, we hit the Tokyo Skytree today, which is a broadcasting tower built in 2011 that at 634 meters high is the tallest tower in the world. The deck we went to was only 550 meters up, as we didn’t feel like queuing for another unknown amount of time to get the additional ticket for the highest viewing gallery after standing in line for an hour to buy the first ticket.

Now on to the photos!

The Tokyo urban sprawl is just phenomenal; literally as far as the eye can see, even from 550 m up. That’s 1804 feet, or just a hair under 1/3 of a mile tall.

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I like this shot as it’s got a little of everything–tall buildings, shorter buildings, a river, and a building that looks a little like a cruise ship, or the front of a Shinkansen (bullet train).

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I picked this photo because my lens compresses the buildings nicely into a wall of architecture. Can’t wait to see the original on a real computer instead of the compressed version on my phone. 🙂

And finally: Mount Fuji, or Fuji-san, as the Japanese say. It’s 106 kilometers (65 and change miles) from Tokyo, and visible on a clear day. The day wasn’t very clear, but we could juuuuust make Fuji-san out through the haze, and a couple of filters in the Photoshop Express app to mess with the exposure and contrast made it more visible, although the city now looks apocalyptically dark.

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After the Skytree we made our way back to the train station whose name I have forgotten where we switched from the JR rail service to the subway for the final leg of the trip there, and reserved seats on the Shinkansen for our next three trips. It’s currently a high travel season within Japan, and they book up fast. Our JR passes allow us to travel for free (technically–we already paid for the travel), and you can normally just hop right on a Shinkansen…except for times like now.

The JR East service reps who helped us were pleasant and knowledgeable, and managed to get us reserved seating, although we’ll be heading out to Osaka kind of late tomorrow, as all the earlier trains were totally full except for the smoking cars.

We headed back to the hotel for some down time, and will be heading out to dinner shortly.


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