Day 7 Shake, Sumo and Wow

Up and out at 11.00 to catch the train to a Sum restaurant with 300 other UK IST we arrived and were seated, before us was a selection of foods and a pot containing vegetables and chicken, a host came around and turned on the cooker and the mix started to boil and cook the meat and the vegetables. Chatting and introducing ourselves to others at the table as we helped ourselves to the meal, this is a traditional meal eaten by the Sumos daily to keep them fit.

  
After the meal were were shown some Sumo by two local men, they showed how supple they are, a man at 120kg doing the splits is pretty impressive. They demonstrated some of the typical moves then had a match. Afterwards they invited members of the audience to take part a guy fromScotland stood up in his kilt to challenge the Sumo, an 50/50 bout for 30 seconds before the Scots guy heaved the Sumo out of the ring!

  
Myself and Chris then jumped on the train and headed for the Honjo Life Safety Center, a centre where the Japanese in particular the children go to learn about safety in particular disasters, we watched a film of the the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, this caused some damage but the Tsunami afterwards devastated huge areas of East Japan. Next was the earthquake simulator a room where we had to kneel on the floor under a table while the room shook at Magnitude 7.

Next a few minutes down the road was the Skytree, the biggest free standing tower in the World. We entered the lift at 600 meters per second we arrived at 350 meters in seconds. The views were amazing,  a real wow factor, even though the smog and haze of Tokyo meant vision was limited. 
 
  
 
Back to the hotel a caught a local festival taking place, dancing and melon and ice carving.  

  
Next out to Shibuya the famous crossing and square seen in many a film. The crossing is 5 separate pedestrian crossings that all go at the same time, all traffic is held, 100’s of people cross before the traffic starts moving again.

  
Time to eat and we found a restaurant, ordered food and beer and enjoyed another selection, at £20 for 4of us including beer the best value meal so far.

    
Finally back to the hotel via the 7 Eleven to buy food and clear out the travel card we’d been issued with for Travel but also could be used in the convenience stores.

I took to bed at 1.00 Chris and Nut stayed out….

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