Distractions, reflections

Since Tamachi station and Mita station are north and east of the hotel where we normally stay, the  morning commutes to the university are a regular walk that way.  I decided to take a roundabout route east and south to look around, on the way to Tamachi station.

The area is called Shinshiba. Looking west, the towers — it’s hard to judge whether they’re offices or apartments — are built up to the edge of the canal.

To these southwest, the pedestrian bridge is painted pink.

I followed the main road to walk south over a bridge.  On subsequent walks, I discovered a Hanamasa supermarket further down this road.  Beyond that, there’s more highrises.

Following the main road, I turned east at the pedestrian crosswalk at the traffic lights.

Ot the souteast corner of the next major intersection, the old location of the Shibaura Institute of Technology has been vacated and not yet replaced with a new tenant. Read the rest of this entry →

As a first — with meetings at universities in Tokyo and Helsinki less than a week apart — the best way for me to travel was to book a round-the-world ticket, with a stopover in Beijing to see Eric. The first leg of trip brought me to Narita. When Diana and I came to Japan last summer, we landed in Osaka and returned to Narita on the bus, so this is my first time on the Narita Express train.

The plane arrived just at dusk, so there wasn’t much to see outside the train windows in the dark. I had reservations at the same hotel as in the summer, so I knew that I would have to change trains at Tokyo Station.

From there, it was only a short hop over to Tamachi Station. The station gates are up over the tracks. Walking south, there’s a small cluster of restaurants down the escalators.

Diana and I tried some of these restaurants last time. The map of the surrounding area provided by the hotel listed an additional cluster of restaurants and shops a little further south in Shibaura, so I went there looking for a noodle shop. Read the rest of this entry →