Rainbow Bridge – South Promenade Sunset

Whenever I meet people visiting Tokyo or planning to visit Tokyo I always get asked the one question: what should I see here? Not wanting to be too obvious and giving the examples everyone has already heard of, my answer is recently this: walk across the Rainbow Bridge around sunset. Surprisingly few people do this. It is not a difficult walk, there is no entrance charge and the views are spectacular. At the end of the walk you are usually rewarded with an interesting visit to Odaiba, or you can do it the other way around and use the walk as a starting point for an interesting evening tour of the city. In the summer season the bridge entrances close at 20:30 and in the winter it close at 17:30. After closing you have 30 minutes to get out before the bridge is shut down for the night. I usually recommend the North promenade (see my previous blog posts about the Rainbow Bridge by clicking the tag) as it is much more scenic than the South promenade. A couple of weeks ago I decided to try the south side by myself and while not as good as the South promenade it is still worth a visit. The South promenade is also the one you have to use if you want to bring a bicycle over.

From the South promenade you have a splendid view of Odaiba island itself, as well as the Odaiba Island Battery Park, an old gun battery set up over a hundred years ago to protect Tokyo harbor from seaborne assaults. Luckily it was never really used and parts of it today is a just huge almost wild series of islands, one of which is accessible from Odaiba by a walkway. For the others you will need a boat.

The South promenade is also a good place for boat spotting if you are into that, as most passenger ships using Tokyo harbors pass underneath.