Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Ryogoku Bridge across the Sumida River (2)

June 2011 (35.694 Degrees, 139.789 Degrees) Ryogoku Bridge

Our previous look at the Ryogoku Bridge (from the blog of June 3rd, 2009) was of a photo taken 20 years ago from a bus on the Shuto Expressway. In that photo the girders were painted turquoise and the railing was magenta. Today's blog has a photo taken last Summer when they were getting ready to repaint the bridge.

The Ryogoku Bridge was built in 1969 in a kind of Art Deco Style.  It is a 330 m long three span steel plate girder arch bridge with a 89 m. long center span. The Shuto Expressway crosses above the east abutment.

The river's current becomes complicated at this point as the Sumida is on a curve and the Kanda canal empties into the river at the bridge. Ryogoku means "bridge to connect two countries" because Shimousa Province is along the east bank and Musashi Province is on the west bank.

The Ryogoku area is the home of Sumo wrestling, restaurant boats, fireworks displays, and other entertainments.

Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Ryogoku Bridge across the Sumida River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.