Even comparing it to the Adriatic and venice and all of those places, Tokyo has countless waterways and river ways that can be enjoyed if, if you know how and that, that's what we're doing today.

I got my captain's license here in Japan last year with one of the goals being to be able to enjoy the river ways of Tokyo.

Then did a little seminar because Tokyo Bay and the rivers have their own rules and whatnot.

And then about the time that I finished up with all that winter hit.

And so recently I've been getting back on the water and thought that today I bring you guys along for the ride oh, that is bright.

We probably can't do the entire city in the day, but we're gonna have some fun this area around tennis.

I'll make a pretty decent use of the river space with like restaurants and and very distracting.

And as we get over here, it was a wall painted with a cigar chummy send player, which is pretty awesome and we've got some cherry blossom trees.

They're blooming pretty early.

I might know a spot that should have a little more trees than, but before we take a quick peek at the Sakura, I want to head out towards Odaiba because there's something really cool.

I want to show you there.

Now, I want to avoid getting too close.

But this right here, this is what I want to show you.

So, the area of Odaiba is back there and I often come to Odaiba by walking over rainbow bridge and from the top you can see this island.

It's always been a mystery to me Until recently when I found out that these islands here which nobody is allowed onto originally islands for cannons to protect Japan and help keep the country closed.

There was originally something like 11 of these spread throughout the area.

The word dyba itself actually comes from these islands here.

These Cannon islands and the area of Odaiba you didn't know is actually reclaimed land.

If you look at some of the old area maps or nautical maps, Odaiba and this entire area, it simply wasn't there.

But you can see just how much of Tokyo is based on the water.

These Dyba here, we're kind of consolidated and built into the area of Odaiba.

So if you look at the entrance, you can actually see remnants of these diva.

In fact that one over there, you can access that one from Odaiba and go on to it and explore it.

It's a ton of fun.

But ones like this.

Nobody is allowed on them anymore.

Mm hmm.

It's still the beginning of March right now.

So these are the early blossoming type and it's not a ton but it is enough to have my own personal little Hammami session and this seems like a pretty good spot to give some love to my stomach and our sponsors.

So this next little segment is going to be both sponsored and delicious because today's video is going to be sponsored by Tokyo treat and it's not going to call them.

They're my favorite snack boxes that we have opened up countless times over in Tokyo lens Explorer channel.

But if you're new to them, the big difference is that Tokyo treat.

It gives you as many as 20 limited edition exclusive or seasonal snacks and candies and like the spring flavors of peach kitty cats, Rambo flavored punky.

It's also usually drinking what do we got time?

We got peach flavored drink thirsty and Sakura Co focuses heavily on authentic traditional or artesian snacks and teas as well as table where there's always some form of table ware in there and I've been building a small collection and Sakura co for example, also helps partner with local japanese snack makers and carry on their traditions and whatnot.

And it's all beautifully detailed in the book that comes with each month's box because we are quickly coming up on spring as you can see both boxes are heavily heavily Sakura themes like it is, it's an absolute Sakura festival.

It's Sakura green tea.

I have literally, yeah, that's the first thing I'm having when I get home tonight.

I'm on a bit of a green to kick lately Manju.

I'm jumping in these suckers donuts thinks I have, you know like, oh they're cute with the birds in the background.

Tokyo treating psychotic.

Have also given me a code lens that you can use to get $5 off of your first purchase of either box.

They will both be linked in the description box below and that is the end of our official sponsored segment for this video.

And now at this point I'm just snacking.

Also, if you're part of the Patreon crew and you're caught up on our recent live streams and videos, you'll know just how much Tokyo treatment satoko helped me out during my recent trouble and having to go back to Canada and everything and the level of gratitude I have for them.

So good snacks which I always love.

Plus good people, I will happily sit here and share their stuff with you for as long as I can.

Mm hmm Now let's go explore some of the city's canals.

Mm hmm.

Alright, so before we get into the city and the canals and everything.

There's actually one spot that I really love that I want to show you while legally you can anchor pretty much anywhere you don't want to be anchoring in a narrow canal or in a river or something like that.

So if you do want to take a break and anchor, I don't know maybe order a pizza or something like that.

one of the best places for that is coming in here into the hamadi Kew gardens area.

The homily Kew gardens are just right there off to the side, they're closed right now.

You can't actually go inside of them.

But the waterways are open and if you come out here on the weekend more often than not, you'll actually have boats gathered and hanging out here and everything.

It's just a really nice place to relax and anchor.

We're not going to anger today.

I just wanted to show you now it is a paid garden to enter and you can enter from land or there's a boat that'll bring you out here.

But one of the things that I love about this place the most is just the juxtaposition between the garden itself and the city in the background and I have yet to ever see it crowded.

And is that one of the Tokyo water taxis?

It is.

I've literally never actually seen one of these in operation.

I hear that during cherry blossom season, they can get really popular and you need to book them as early as six months in advance, but it's my first time ever actually seeing one.

Okay, let's get into the city.

Mm hmm.

So this river here is the Sumida river right now we're right beside a sack.

So we've got the sky tree and the Asahi building over here and this when we talk about the Tokyo being a city on the water.

This was the core of that culture.

The Sumida River was the river of the people even more so than it is today and you can still see remnants of that today when you've got the Sumida River fireworks and you've got the Hotaru Festival or the Lantern Festival right here on the river, small pieces of that Still remain, but it's nothing like it was.

The big change happened after the 1923 great earthquake and then the next big change obviously happened after the World War and between those two, they had to rebuild so many things and a lot of that river and water culture disappeared for awhile, floods and tsunamis became such a concern that the river was blocked off by giant sea walls on either side and they've now added walkways to these sea walls and they're trying to bring back that culture of enjoying the waterways of Tokyo and you can see that in areas like this.

In fact there's this whole walkway that goes around here for jogging and they're thinking of moving the Tokyo marathon out to this area and there's a canal in here that I want to show you these gates here have lights just like traffic lights, which will be red or green to let you know if you can come in and out and that was a duck that just went clear right over my head and so distracting.

Although this particular canal ends in a dead end, the number of river facing shops that they've built along as well as the view of the sky tree makes it one of my favorite spots to just zip in and out.

I have to be really careful of depth right now because we are at we are at exactly the lowest point in the tide right now.

And while there is an arguably better view available from the other side, you actually have to approach from that side and it requires us to go through lift locks and whatnot.

And I didn't want to spend too much of our time in locks today.

So I figured this little peek at the sky train would be if you get enough for now.

Alright, let's see.

Let's see if we can't get out to the area of Akihabara through some of the narrow canals.

I'm looking forward to this.

The one concern I do have in this canal here is getting the intake for the engine plugged by some kind of garbage because there's a lot of garbage in the water.

Mm hmm.

So as we come into this section here because of the number of votes on each side, we try to bring down the speed as much as possible.

I don't want to create wake and have the votes unnecessarily shake up against the pier.

Maybe do damage to them.

It got really dark because I was saying this is just such a beautiful space to vote through.

This is this is something else, wow.

Some of these boats are incredibly old too and made out of wood right now.

The area that we're in is the Asakusa bashi area.

It's just down the road from Asakusa and again from above from the bridges and whatnot.

I have seen this space countless times.

It's just something else being down here.

So when you get into this space, one of the things that you do have to be careful of is these rather aggressive jagged rock walls here, but it's more than wide enough.

You definitely got space to turn around if you need to and I'm pretty sure that that is already Akihabara up ahead of me recognize the blue bridge.

Mm hmm.

Right.

So up in that area there, which is okay and there's a beautiful spot right up on the bridge where you can catch the crossing of the trains and get some.

It's really, really nice.

After a decade and a half in Japan.

I can't believe that I haven't done this.

The sooner this is a six hour boat rental by the way.

And when I started today, I thought unequivocally that we would have more than enough time to shoot everything that I wanted and to go everywhere that I wanted.

But this canal here actually goes through all the way around and I'm gonna have to do that entire loop another time.

Now I might save that for summer because the second half of the loop is almost entirely covered by all the highways and whatnot.

So it'd be nice to get out of the summer sun.

Right?

I did not expect us to run out of time.

This this is just so much fun.

Look at the parking job of that dump truck that when I get really focused on the kind of person who just totally forgets to eat.

So this is the sacrum Madeline, It's amazing.

Thank you.

Look at that.

You got the trains behind me.

What everything is just so distracting right now.

I am loving this.

I did a podcast for my Patreon crew recently where I talked about when the borders finally opened up how Patreon boat rides through Tokyo are 100% going to have to be a thing that we do Also.

I filmed a lot of today and I mean a lot of today on my 360 camera from into 360 because I want to be even focused on the water and don't worry about the camera.

I have no idea how anything turned down.

Hopefully it was good.

I am racing the time back.

Seriously, we've got to do this again.

We've barely even scratched the surface of the Tokyo waterways.

There's so much more to see, let me know what you think down below and I will see you guys again real soon.