From an unrelentingly rainy Tuesday in Tokyo, east of the Arakawa River on the fringes of the Japan capital. Under heavy grey skies you can feel even more absorbed by the labyrinthine streets in these parts and it can be hard to know where Tokyo ends and someplace else begins. Keep going a little further east though and you come to the banks of the Edogawa river where Tokyo ends and Chiba begins.
It’s amazing how quickly you can switch from the booming scale of the buildings and businesses immediately out front of Shinagawa station to the local intimacy of the streets around the Kitahon district.
Early evening on the way from Yushima Tenmangu shrine to Okachimachi via Ueno, the narrow streets and alleyways either side of the busy and brash Kasuga-dori Avenue are fun to explore.
Back in the temple town of Narita, Chiba Prefecture, for the first time in a few years on Monday.
It was fun to slip out of the flow of the national holiday foot traffic on Omotesando-dori, the main approach to Naritasan Shinsho-ji temple, and escape to the quiet of some of the other streets that navigate this attractive town.