Even after over twenty years

I have been living in Japan for most of my life.
I came here when I was twenty years old…and that was over twenty years ago now.

I think Japan is the most beautiful country in the world and Tokyo is the best city.

I wanted to show some scenes that I see regularly in Japan and I may have started taking for granted but they are a part of what makes Japan so special.

Rather than go through the photos in my camera’s memory cards, I decided to be a bit lazy and see what I could find online.
I found a website called Getty Images that has many stock photos…some of them of Japan.
The people who take these photos must have cameras that are much nicer than mine because they took some really nice photos.

I use photos that I took myself in most of my blog posts, but the following photos are from Getty Images.

Every January, when the "Tokyo Stock Exchange" reopens after the New Years holidays, the female staff wear kimono.

A"bird's eye view" of Tokyo

A traditional Japanese breakfast.

A Japanese garden.

The symbol of Japan: 富士山 (Mount Fuji).

Tokyo's "Rainbow Bridge".

Japanese "Green Tea".

The Shibuya area of Tokyo

The Shinjuku area of Tokyo.

新幹線 (Bullet trains)

Tokyo Tower

By the way, today is the seventh day of the New Year.
On this day it is Japanese custom to eat 「七草粥」 (“Seven Herbs Porridge“) for breakfast.
I will have it for breakfast today as I usually do on January 7th.

Click here to see my post that explains this tradition in more detail.

Shinjuku skyline

Today we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building because they have a free observatory on the 45th floor.

We took the express elevator that goes from the first to the forty-fifth floor in 55 seconds! It made my ears pop like flying in an airplane.

I’ve been in this building before when they had a New York City photo exhibit that I went to see a couple of years ago…but I’ve never taken photos of the Shinjuku skyline from the observatory before, so I decided to do that today.

It was a bit overcast today, unfortunately, so the view wasn’t as clear as it could have been.

A sign there said that on a clear day, Mount Fuji can be seen from the observatory.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building isn’t the only place to get a bird’s eye view of Tokyo’s skyline. There are higher buildings and towers in the city…some offer a better view, too. But it’s one of the few free observatories in Tokyo.

Here are some of the photos I took: