Tramping Tokyo

In case you are wondering why there was no 'Blog' on Friday it was simply that I had a busy day. My passport had hardly any free pages left for visas and I'm hoping to get a three-year extension this time so I went into the British Embassy to appry for a new one.

They cost 19,000 yen now! Good grief! For a 32 page book when all is said and done. But it was a pleasant walk over there from Tokyo Station. It they could have let me take the short cut through the palace grounds and gardens it's only about a mile and it would have made an interesting trip too! As you can see from the photograph the Imperial Palace is located on what was the vast site of the shogun's Edo Castle and it makes an unusual enclave of peace and greenery in the middle of the city. The British Embassy is just over the road from the west gate. But to walk around the perimeter outside the moat more than doubles the distance.

Business done there I headed to the National Diet Library in the hope of finding some old housing statistics. It wasn't anything like as difficult to get into as I'd feared - much easier to use than the British Library - but I couldn't find the stuff I needed, their catalogue system beat me in the end.

And finally a five mile hike across town (I love long walks in city streets!) to Aoyama University at Shibuya where I met up with some friends from our choir. St. Catherine's College Cambridge were doing a choral recital there so we all piled ino the chapel to escape the Tokyo rush hour and listen to some of our favourite Byrd and Gibbons.

It's a small world these days. Not so?