Category: JapanGuide

If Shinjuku-gyoen is my favorite park in Tokyo, Sankei-en 三渓園 is my favorite one in Kanagawa. It was a private garden owned by a family of silk traders one hundred years ago. Sankei Hara was the family member who first bought the land. He loved Japanese gardens and architecture so much that he decided to design the garden by himself, he also brought traditional wood houses that he loved from all over Japan.

If you visit it early during a weekday it is a very quiet place with areas where the forest and the Japanese style houses will be for you and nobody else. I recommend it to everyone who complains about being tired of visiting temples and shrines filled with tourists when traveling around Japan for the first time.

Since I looked up Tokyo bay for the first time in Google Maps in 2005, I have always been wondering what is that tower that comes out of the sea, more or less on the middle of the bay.

If you zoom in this is what you get:

Its name is 風の塔 “Tower of the Wind” and was built by Kajima Corporation. It seems like an antenna but it turns out that it is a ventilation system for the highway that crosses the bay under the sea. The name of the highway is Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line and it is actually a combination of a bridge and a tunnel. The Tower of the Wind can’t be visited, but the rest area 海ほたる Umi-hotaru “The Sea Firefly”, which is right at the end of the tunnel, can be accessed by anyone.

The other day we cross Tokyo bay using the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, we passed under the Tower of the Wind and we stopped at The Sea Firefly to have a coffee and take photos. To best way to access the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line from the center of Tokyo is to go to Odaiba first using the Rainbow Bridge.

Crossing the bay under the sea. Speed limit 80km/h (50mph).

When we arrived to the rest area 海ほたる Umi-hotaru “The Sea Firefly” we parked our car and walked around for a while. We had the sensation that we were on a boat. The building has several floors, all of them full of shops, restaurants and, of course, a Starbucks.

That thing by the sea that looks like a monument is part of the machinery that was used to drill the highway tunnel.