I wanted to leave it at 臨機応変 but at the moment this site can't handle Japanese script without something western backing it up. Read into that whatever you like.

Anyway, 臨機応変 means just that. To adjust according to the moment, to play it by ear, and so on. 

I just spent three days in Tokyo which (as you'll know if you've read the blog) I regard as the most awesome place on the planet, with very few competitors. The first day was somewhat washed out by the rain, although I got a few pictures. The second day involved me walking / taking the subway around Tokyo for the better part of 16 hours, and the third day was a morning out shooting followed by the bullet train back to Nagoya.

I was thinking of getting up at an obscenely early hour and going to the famous fish market at Tsukiji, but to catch the famous auction I'd have to basically rewrite the subway timetables, so instead I walked over to the site of Tokyo's newest attraction, the 600-something meter Sky Tree.  Guess what? It was cloudy and it was barely visible. At best, one third of it could be seen unless the clouds parted for a short moment.

I took a few pictures of it, and figured it was a writeoff. But post processing software can do some impressive things, like making extremely ordinary photos look moody and dramatic.

So, while it wasn't what I was aiming for, it turned out quite well.

The Sky Tree is not far from Asakusa, and given that my hotel was in Ueno it was within walking distance. On the way I got some shots of the area. There are all kinds of colourful bridges, for a start. Couple of shots from a similar perspective, using different F-stops to get more or less of the background in focus.

This fellow was flying around near the base of the sky tree, giving me a good excuse to play with the tracking on the D7000. Pretty satisfactory.

I stopped off at Asakusa itself while it was quiet. One nice shot of a devout individual.

Following this, I headed for Tsukiji while it was still early enough to be extremely busy. I'd heard about it, but I'd never been there. I didn't get to see the whole place, because it's huge and I had other places I wanted to see. Anyway, it was certainly busy. People whiz around on scooter things and generally endanger pedestrians (and have the right to do so; they have priority over anyone who's not there on business). 

I got one other shot worth uploading, a knife merchant who was sharpening his wares. Logically enough - if you're going to cut up huge frozen fish, you need sharp knives. 

Not far fron Tsukiji there is a garden called Hamarikyu where I had not been before. It's a very impressive place indeed, costs all of 300 yen to enter and is worth a lot more. It was very hard to choose from the dozens of shots I took there. 

Going to finish part 1 here. Part 2 will involve (inter alia) lots of shots of the Tokyo skyline, by night and by day. All the photos (including the ones I don't put in the blog) can be found in the "Tokyo" gallery in the main part of this Zenfolio account.

Thank you as ever for viewing, hope you enjoy the pictures. Stay tuned.