Tokyo tour

Saturday, September 29, 2012, Rick Seely (tour guide), Marie Schraven, Ginny Blair and I went to Tokyo.  Rick, Marie and I met at CAJ at 8 a.m. in the morning and left to pick up Ginny.  

Ginny, Marie, Rick & Winnie

Our first stop after picking up Ginny was at McDonald's.  Always a good place to go for a good cup of coffee.  

McDonald's Coffee

Rick took us to the Shinjuku Towers.  There is an observation deck on the 45th floor that gives a good overall picture of Tokyo and its size.  It is a very large city.  When I went to look at population numbers, there are some discrepancies, primarily because larger cities border right with Tokyo such as Yokohama are or are not included.  With these included the population is somewhere between 37 and 38 million people.  If you just include the Tokyo prefecture, the population is about 13.5 million people.  

Towards Mt. Fuji (see it in the background?)

East

Towards Tokyo Bay

Looking West

Neighboring buildings with interesting architecture

In some senses, Tokyo is like any other large city in the world.  I was taken a-back when I would hear English speaking people.  In Higashikurume (where CAJ is) or Kiyose (where I live), if anyone speaks English, it is probably someone I know or associated somehow with CAJ.  😊 
Tokyo is very diverse.  There are people who are dressed in various fashions. 

Shibuya Girls and some random tourists

Some women in traditional dress and modern dress

One of my personal highlights was to see the Chu-Ken Hachikō statue by the Shibuya Station.  Have you seen the movie Hachi: A Dog's Tale?  The Shibuya Station is where the dog waited for his owner every day.  It is a popular meeting place.  

We were able to enter many buildings with varying architecture.  That did strike me as very interesting since many of the buildings are required to meet earthquake codes.  I ended up taking over 80 pictures, but cannot put them all on here, so if you wish, you can go to www.flickr.come/photos/wlangelaar to see many of my other pictures and places I went to visit.  
It was another reminder that there are many, many people living in Japan but only about 1% of the population in Japan are Christians (I found conflicting numbers, some up to 3%, still a small amount), which means we may be in a country that has many modern conveniences, but the spreading of God's Word is still very important!