Heading Home

Our journey home takes us from Tokyo to Vancouver at 5:00 pm. After a few hours of waiting our final flight to Saskatoon will get us home at 5:30 pm local time.

We arranged to take a bus to the airport but had a couple of hours to kill till it was time to leave. It was a cloudy, drizzly day but we decided to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Buildings before we had to leave. These are tall, twin towers that you can go to the top of for a great view of the city. There were some great views from up there and it would have been spectacular on a clear day.

On our way to the government buildings we walked under an and overpass. The sidewalk was quite wide and there was a railing at the edge of the sidewalk. Along this railing were about 6 to 8 cardboard shelters that people were clearly living in. What struck me right away was how clean and tidy these things were. There was no garbage lying around, nothing smelled, and I noticed that at one shelter the owner had taken off his shoes and place them neatly outside on a piece of cardboard. Owners of several of these shelters had bicycles propped up outside. I marvelled that even the homeless in Japan are clean and tidy!

The bus to the airport took us by the waterfront and through some agricultural areas, all clean and well maintained. Japan is a beautiful country and I would definitely love to come back to this place.Read more