Views from a flight out of Tokyo

On Friday, I took a morning flight out of Tokyo's Haneda Airport on a domestic trip. It was great to see out of the window to see familiar things down below.

The suspension bridge is the Rainbow Bridge.

The concentrated high-rise buildings are located at a business district called Shinjuku. There are two large parks - one on the right is Shinjuku Gyoen. The larger other one below it is Yoyogi Park.

The two lines seen in the middle are - horizontal, JR JR Chuo Line (rail) and vertical, Kichijoji Dori street. The dark area below is Inokashira Park.

The smoking vocano is Asama Yama.

The Japan Alps mountains were majestic and beautiful.

Kichijoji Autumn Festival

This is the weekend of Kichijoji Aki Matsuri (Autumn Festival). I understand that this is the 37th annual of it. I don't know what they did before that.

Nine Mikoshi in total that are carried by some 2,000 volunteer "katsugite" - or carrying-hands move around the town of Kichijoji.
Below photo is actually that of a poster of the same Mikoshi last year. You can tell the enthusiasm of the katsugite.

It is festive and nice, but because of the Mikoshi, the traffic around the town/train station becomes a mess! As it can be seen from the photo below, buses were not leaving on schedule!

Many little booths with food and games are lined up at the local Hachiman Shrine.

Kagawa

I was back (briefly) in Marugame, Kagawa last week. I wrote about the nice castle there last year.

Beautiful sunset over the Port of Marugame as seen from my hotel.

On the way back to the airport, our car drove by Iino-yama (Mt. Iino), also know as Sanuki Fuji, for the shape resembles Mt. Fuji.

Although the shape is similar, it is only 421.9 m high (whereas the real Fuji is much higher - 3,776 m). Also, unlike the Fuji-yama which is a volcano, this one is a butte.

Here's another view of the same mountain from Kompira Shrine when I "climbed" there in July.
Yes, I did mean "climb" for to get to this shrine, one has to go up 785 steps of stairs.

As I left for home, could see the beautiful Inland Sea from the airplane window.