Japan Photos 14

My flight wasn't until the afternoon and I wasn't going to check out until 10:00 a.m., so I decided to wander around. There is a park near the river with a baseball field in it. In the park, that is, not in the river.
There are shrines and temples everywhere. Here's a little one next to an office building.
That sign looked funny to me so I took a picture.
It was when I saw this sign that I realized what the other one was trying to tell me. This is the entrance to the Hibya Line. If I wanted to catch a train on the Asakusa Line (which I did), I would have to enter a different way.
Here is another Shinto shrine located across the street from...
...the Tokyo Stock Exchange building.
I found out that visitors are allowed in the building, so I went inside.
These are some early Japanese stock certificates on display. That bell was used to open the exchange from 1908 until 1923.
Some more old stock certificates. These date to the time of World War II.
That's the current opening bell.
I don't know where the floor is where they all stand around yelling and shaking little pieces of paper. This looks like it is where computer transactions are done or where all the numbers are crunched.
The big board.
I would hate to work somewhere that people could just look in on me at any time. I don't even open the blinds in the window behind me in my office.
My Japanese was getting so good by the end of the trip that I knew this sign said Tokyo City Air Terminal. Okay, I knew it was the T-CAT because I saw it on the map. Japanese still looks like gibberish to me. The only Japanese I got familiar with was Tokyo. The first two characters in that sign says Tokyo. I learned this watching the weather forecasts on television every morning,
I bought my ticket to Narita Airport from the machine on the left.
The sign over the desk says the trip will take 65 minutes and I think we made it in just about an hour.
On the road to Narita. Wasn't that an old Hope and Crosby movie?
They didn't open the United check-in counters until 11:45.
It really wasn't a check-in counter, but a bunch of self-serve kiosks.
Here in the United States, May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. A whole month. In Japan, they give white people one stinking day. After this, I waited for about four hours for the flight. I got to the airport rather early. Then it was twelve hours to Dulles and several more hours of waiting and flying before touching down in Nashville. The end.

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