Japan's Bridges: Shibaura Canal Bridge in Minato Ward, Tokyo

June 2011 (35.642 Degrees, 139.746 Degrees) Shibaura Canal Bridge

One of the nice things about Tokyo are all the lovely walkways along the canals that run through the city. The Japanese are wonderful gardeners and so these paths are surrounded with well-manicured flowers, trees, and shrubs.

An emperor had decreed that an inland canal should be built just west of the Pacific to allow for the transport of goods (similar to the Intercoastal Waterway in the U.S.). I'm not sure if the canal in this photo is part of the emperor's waterway or if it was created by the many islands being built in Tokyo Bay to house it's growing population. 


The red building behind the bridge is the hotel where we stayed during our last week in Japan. The Japan Society of Civil Engineers had somehow negotiated a price of about $100 a day to stay there. Minato Ward is a maze of canals crossed by hundreds of little bridges including this fantastically-ornamented structure, that may have taken inspiration from all the blossoms that surround it.

Japan's Bridges: Shibaura Canal Bridge in Minato Ward, Tokyo by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.