After all these years of travelling, I finally get to Japan! I have an 11 hour layover here,  and took the chance to get out of the airport and take the train into Tokyo. Shown below is the Sensoji Temple in the Asakusa area, apparently Tokyo's oldest temple. I apologize if the image is a bit hazy, since it rained  most of  the day, and I was continually trying to keep raindrops and condensation off the camera lens. Tucked away in a corner of the temple property far from the hundreds of visitors, I found the oldest building at the Senso-ji site, and the only building with an English explanation. This almost felt like a discovery to me in the midst of all the crowds, and there was even enough space for me to set up a self-timed tripod shot.

For those who  may want to do something similar on a Narita layover, I found this relatively easy to pull off. If you do a websearch for transport from Narita to Tokyo, you  will find that the train system is described as being rather intimidating, and I would have  to agree. However, there is pretty good signage in Japanese, Korean, and English, and I found the train and airport staff to be extremely helpful in getting me pointed in the right direction, even if our ability to communicate was limited. 

At the Asakusa station in Tokyo, the station attendant knew little English, but when I said, 'Narita?', he replied, "Narita airport?" a word he appeared to have memorized precisely for this kind of situation. He then looked at his watch and said, "11:50", jumped up, escorted me to the ticket machine, and punched in the correct options. This left me with just the task of (very quickly) putting in the appropriate amount of yen--1250 by the way--an grabbing my ticket. I thought about pulling out my cell phone to check the time, but based on the station attendant's air of urgency, I figured that might waste precious seconds. I grabbed my bags, checked through the wicket, and took about a half a second to scan the signs directing me to the right platform, before I felt a train blowing into the platform below. I ran down the stairs, and there it was. Jumped on with the doors closing seconds  later. One hour, fifteen minutes later, I was  back at the airport.

The other fortunate thing is that, completely by accident, I ended  up here on a Saturday. This meant the trains were mercifully uncrowded as you can see. Quite unlike what I had envisioned.