Asakusa by night

We'rer getting to the "crazy night" part of the story. Being the sometimes klutz that I am, I managed to buy a 230 yen ticket when recharging my PASMO card ( for use instead of tickets on the metro, you can also pay in some shops with it ). Knowing that a ticket is valid only on the day of purchase I decided to head back to Asakusa in late evening for some nighttime photography. First I headed for Tokyo Sky Tree which turned out to be quite far away ( it's immense size made me think it's closer ). Anyway, here's the effect of my efforts:

Huge, ain't it? Unfortunately it's not quite finished yet.

Before I forget, here's the Asahi HQ by night:

Some of those lights in the central building didn't go off the whole night. That's some serious overtime!

Interesting stuff I stumbled upon along the way:

One of those cool rotating parkings.

Asakusa temple by night:

Here's the funny part. Somehow, I've been thinking all this time that there's no trains between 2 and 5 AM. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at my metro entrance at 1.30 only to see it closed. It gets worse... the last train left at  midnight and the first will be here at... 5 AM! What is one supposed to do with 4 hrs wait time in the middle of the night?  I could try walking back but I had no map ( would have to rely on area maps near stations ) and Asakusa is rather far from Waseda. I decided to check out a nearby capsule hotel but 2000 yen for 4 hours of sleep didn't sound like such a great deal. I wasn't all that sleepy either and had some warm clothes with me, so it wasn't cold outside. A shower was quite tempting, though. Long story short I ended up walking a lot around the area. Learned a few things, too. First of all, 24h McDonald serves only take outs during the night ( ate like a bum, sitting on stairs near the Asahi building:P ). Secondly, there's a hostel there that offers 30 mins of internet use for 100 yen. A good deal if you have a few hours to burn. Third, between 3 and 4 in the morning, there's almost no one on the streets ( homeless generally stick to parks - they're a problem that seems to be ignored by everyone ). Lastly, metro till 6 o'clock is almost empty.

Staying up all night allowed me to see and photograph the sunrise. I've also seen a few drunks, one almost hit a lamp post on the bridge. Another talked with me for a while with limited success as we couldn't really understand each other much. Seemed fascinated by the Sky Tree, though. All in all, I missed the first train by 2 minutes and had to wait 20 for the next one.

 
Stay tuned, next on Hot In Tokyo, O-matsuri!