With a short break coming, we made last minute plans to head to Tokyo. We took a late night out of Incheon to land at Tokyo's Haneda International Airport a few moments back...
Haneda is one of the two airports serving the Tokyo metropolitan area, the other being Narita which is a bit far - 77 kilometres from the city centre, as opposed to Haneda, which is just 22 kilometres away...
We again flew in on Peach, a Japanese low cost carrier - the one that flew us in the last time into Osaka-Kansai...
This is our second trip to Japan - on the first trip, while did want to visit Tokyo, we ended up dropping plans to focus on Osaka, Hiroshima and Kyoto. And we ended up so smitten by Japan that we've returned back here at the first opportunity we got...
This is quite a historic and exciting city to be in and we did get a sense of that vibe as we got off the plane. The Tokyo metropolitan area is the most populous urban agglomeration in the world followed by Mumbai and Delhi...
The city also has quite a history it. Located on the eastern coast of Honshu island, the city was known as Edo during the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868. The name was romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo. During this period, Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world and home to an urban culture centered on the notion of a "floating world".
During the Edo period, the city was ravaged by about 100 fires that mostly begun by accident and then quickly escalated and spread through neighborhoods. The wooden constructions aided the spread of the fires. It is estimated that between 1600 and 1945, the city - Edo or Tokyo, as you may call it, was leveled every 25–50 years or so by fire, earthquakes, or war.
In 1868, when the shogunate came to an end, Edo was renamed Tokyo or the "eastern capital". Then, Emperor Meiji moved his residence from Kyoto to Tokyo, making the city the formal capital of Japan.
And then came the Second World War, during which the city was repeatedly bombed by the United States. After the war, Tokyo was completely rebuilt, and was showcased to the world during the 1964 Summer Olympics. And now, Tokyo is on course for the 2020 Summer Olympics...
As we head into the city, we say Konnichiwa Tokyo - こんにちは 東京 and salute the spirit of the Tokyokko - the people of Tokyo...
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