Monday 6 May 2013

Golden Week 4-1, Jonanjima

We took off to Jonanjima today - a perennial favourite. It's located on Tokyo Bay, just north of Haneda airport.  It was more crowded there today than we've ever seen it... maybe because more Tokyo-ites have cars, maybe the recession means people go to plane spot rather than actually catch planes... Haneda is the worlds 4th busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, 29th busiest in terms of plane movements.  It has recently opened a third runway.  In terms of numbers of planes per runway, I imagine there are few airports that would be busier.
Hakusan dori... a Golden Week Ghost Town.
The deserted feel to the pseudo parkland of the industrialized reclaimed land that is Jonanjima
was more typical of a Tokyo weekend.
Planes came along this path every 2 mins.
 
 
next
next
next - the vast majority of planes are ANA or JAL but we also saw flights
come in for China Airlines, South East China, StarFlyer, Cathay, British Airways,
Solaseed
Panorama lo
Panorama looking out towards Haneda
zipping in one after another.
It's a popular spot for picnicers
The only food van in the place.... it surely isn't China...
Paid carpark, but  Japan is very benevolent to motorbikes and it's free parking mostplaces.
There was a queue of at least 10 cars waiting to get in - at least 30 min for car number 10,
probably closer to an hour.
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2 comments:

Rurousha said...

Is there a nice picnic spot where I can watch steam trains trundling past? ^^

Cecilia said...

Hmm... have you been to the Jonathon's near the train lines at Uguisandi? Apparently it is extremely popular with tecchan, to the extent I think you need to reserve window seats. You'd be sitting for a long time waiting for a steam train though.;)

I often wonder why, with all JR Easts shift to profit making inside the stations, they don't take advantage of the potential for railway cafes. Ueno station would be fantastic for it, as would Yotsuya - the space is there, if the powers that be would just see the potential!