Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Kototoi Bridge across the Sumida River (1)

March 2012 (35.714 Degrees, 139.803 Degrees) Kototoi Bridge

The next bridge across the Sumida is the Kototoi Bridge. We are now about five miles upstream from the Kachidoki Bridge, where we began our journey up the Sumida River. The Sumida Cruise Line turned around at the Tobu Railway Bridge and so we are now traveling along walking paths that stop and start sporadically along the river. The popular Asakusa Ward is on the west side of the river (where we are standing) and the Mukojima Ward is across the river. Cherry trees were planted on the east bank, which are a popular tourist attraction in the Spring.

The Kototoi Bridge is one of the many bridges that were constructed across the Sumida River after the Great Kanto Earthquake. The bridge was damaged during World War II and subsequently repaired and widened. It is a continuous, three span steel plate girder bridge on concrete caissons. Like most of the road bridges across the Sumida it is 72 ft wide, with four traffic lanes and wide sidewalks.

We'll take a closer look at this bridge tomorrow.

Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Kototoi Bridge across the Sumida River (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.