One of the lovlier things about travelling is fresh eyes: mundane scenes from everyday life become interesting. This is particularly true if you’re a little bit off the tourist path.

My hotel was in the Ryugoku area of Sumida. This isn’t a neighbourhood you’ll hear a lot about (Shibuya, Ginza and Shinjuku have the good PR) but it’s an interesting part of the city. The Sumida river runs north-south-ish through Tokyo, and my hotel was on the eastern river bank.

So, as I do when I’m home, I did a lot of walking. There was a well built walking path along the river which I frequented but I also wandered through neighbourhoods and back streets on at least one occasion in some heavy rain. I started noticing the mailboxes at some point–I’m not sure why, except that in North America they rarely stand out so much. Usually red, larger than what you’d see on a house in North America and covered in kanji calligraphy which I suppose I could translate but haven’t.