Last month I visited Japan for a three week long adventure with my partner Lillian. It goes without saying we were incredibly excited about visiting somewhere so far away, visiting lots of interesting and beautiful places, enjoying lots of tasty and weird food and emersing ourselves in a culture that's so different to our own back in the UK. Obviously I was also looking forward to doing the odd bit of fishing as well but with so much to see and do I was realistic about how much I'd be able to squeeze in.
I suffer from gout and during the night before we flew out I woke up and felt the first signs of an attack developing in my right knee. It's a horrible condition that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Luckily it didn't flare up properly until we reached Japan as the long journey there would have been a nightmare if it had happened twenty four hours earlier. The subsequent inflammation and associated pain in the joint reduced my mobility and slowed down our adventure for the first few days but despite finding walking difficult and at times painful I soldiered on, hobbling along as fast as I could around our first destination on the trip, the mega city of Tokyo.
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| Tokyo is massive. We went up to the observation deck of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building near our hotel to take a look. The city extends as far as the eye can see. In every direction. Tokyo is mind bogglingly massive. |
Staying in Shinjuku we used the metro to visit a few places of interest nearby while my knee was a problem. On the to way to Shinjuku station we spotted this infamous mutated dinosaur doing what it's infamous for, attacking Tokyo.
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| Godzilla on the rampage. |
It might be a sprawling metropolis but Tokyo also has many beautiful parks where you can get away from the crowds. We visited the Meiji Shrine and it's gardens early one morning before the bulk of tourists arrived and it was blissfully quiet.
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| Meiji Shrine is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken. It is situated in a beautiful park the has hundreds of different species of trees planted throughout. |
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| The Japanese visit the shrine to make an offering and pray. |
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| After leaving the shrine we visited it's nearby gardens where there were some impressive Bonsai trees... |
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| ...and a pond full of Koi carp. If I'd had some tackle with me I may have been tempted. |
On day three Lillian assured me she'd found a place where I could do some fishing in the sea. We caught a couple of trains and headed to DiverCity Tokyo Plaza shopping centre. After some lunch there we headed to the fishing spot, the Seaside Park in Odaiba, passing a huge statue of the mecha Gundam, a massive robot fighting suit, on the way.
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| The Japanese don't do things by halves. At just under 20m tall the statue was pretty impressive. |
Sadly when we got to the fishing spot it was quite small being restricted to a few areas. As is usually the case the best looking bits where we spotted some large seabream swimming around and a stingray feeding in the shallows were off limits. I had a go in the area where fishing was permitted but it was pretty shallow and I didn't catch anything.
By this stage my knee was begining to feel a bit better and I was desperate to catch some fish so a short visit to Ishigaya Fishing Centre was squeezed in between some delicious lunch in a small sushi bar and a walk around the Imperial Palace gardens.
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| Tackle, including a bamboo rod, as well as a ball of paste for bait was provided. |
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| The pond was well stocked, catching fish was incredibly easy and I quickly got bored of catching carp. The same carp (Cyprinus Carpio) that we have in the UK. If I'm honest it was a bit dissapointing that the first fish I had caught on the trip was something I can catch back home. |
On the morning of our last day in Tokyo we visited Tsukiji fish market for some tasty street food before we visited the Wakasu Seaside Park Fishing Facilities near the Tokyo Gate Bridge for a second attempt at catchig something from the sea. It's a very long breakwater and as its name suggestes it's dedicated to use by anglers. It was very busy when we arrived but despite being lined with anglers none of them seemed to be catching anything. Unfortunately I didn't do any better and when it started raining after an hour or so I admitted defeat.
Our time in Tokyo had come to an end. Despite the discomfort caused by my inflamed knee we'd had a great time exploring a tiny fraction of the massive city. I hadn't done that much fishing and what I'd managed to do had been pretty dissapointing but there was plenty of time left to do some more and I was sure I'd soon catch my first new species.
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