Today’s excursion around the Yamanote Line reinforced that Tokyo is a great city to get around by bicycle. Phil and I had been thinking about doing this ride for a long time, and finally put the plan into implementation today. We met at the Marunouchi entrance to Tokyo Station this morning, and set out clockwise. We uploaded a photo onto this blog when we arrived at each of the 29 stations. This of course created a lot of blog posts – 31 to be precise (1 at Tokyo Station the start, 1 at each station on the way, 1 at Tokyo Station at the finish, and 1 gratuitous photo of me holding my bike aloft at Shibuya Crossing).
The circuit took a lot longer than we anticipated. Much of this was due to mucking around trying to find the best road to get to the next station, but there was a *lot* of time spent waiting at red lights and giving way to cars. I suspect that Phil will very soon have a new entry on his Car Free Tokyo blog lamenting this situation. He might even mention the roadwork security guy who was absolutely insistent that we as cyclists ride around his hole in the ground on the pedestrian side rather than the car side. Phil ignored him despite his animated baton pointing, but he jumped in my way and forced the issue when I approached!
We passed lots of interesting sights, and only had time to stop for a few photos.
