Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway is a complex network of roads across the city. The most complex is at Haokozaki Junction. You plan to drive to Narita Airport and a small mistake and the wrong lane and you could be driving towards the Tohoku Expressway in the northern direction than the south eastern part of Chiba prefecture. Hakozaki Junction is not complex only in terms of traffic directions but also when you see the complex construction from the road below.A multi layered construction it is a quite complex structure ambitiously built in a earthquake phone city of Tokyo. Just outside the Suitengu-Mae Station on the Tokyo Metro line the Hakozaki Junction connects three major lines, Mukojima Line, Chiba by the Komatsugawa Line, and Kanagawa by the Fukagawa Line each of which leads you to a very different direction outside the Tokyo city. You are bound to experience a quick confusing moment even with a navigation system on your car, so stay alert in case you drive through this JCT.The junction looks like a giant freaking octopus with many arms spread out. In the Chuo ward, near Suitengumae subway station, the Hakozaki Junction proves that high-density living doesn’t necessarily prevent high-traffic infrastructure from being built.
The Hakozaki Junction is also the popular T-CAT point (points across Tokyo from where buses connect passengers to popular airports Narita and Haneda). You can check the airport bus details here in English. Access is just outside the Tokyo Metro Suiting-Mae Station. The blue sign board in the below image is the entrance to the Airport Terminal T-CATI walked ahead away from the Hakozaki Junction towards the bridge on top of the Sumida River. A panoramic view of the traffic signal with vehicles passing from either side of the road. Weekend open roads and brilliant speeds….I got on the bridge which crosses the Sumida River and saw the gorgeous view of the Kiyosu Bridge with the Tokyo Skytree tower in the backdrop . This is one of my favourite spots to view the Tokyo Skytree and I frequently come to this place since 2011 when the Skytree changed the skyline. I also come in the evenings to view the brilliant illumination of the Skytree and also the Kiyosu Bridge.Same spot, same zoom and same view but in the night time. Beautiful isn’t it? You can also spot lit up boats passing down in the water every ten or fifteen minutes duration. Hakozaki Junction, a complex junction and a beautiful view in the neighbourhood.Although the Hakozaki Junction is a complex web of roads built in layers, it still does not compare with the crazy network of the Higashi Osaka Junction. Far more complex than Hakozaki, Higashi-Osaka Junction, near Aramoto station is a complex structure of highways crisscrossing the landscape in Osaka. A short walk (about five minutes) from Higashi-Osaka Junction is the City Hall Building, a 22-floor structure, which has a nice observatory at the top (observation height is about 100 meters above the ground), offering a spectacular view of the traffic junction below. The view of the junction alone is great to watch at anytime of the day; however, the best time is in the evening when the moving traffic with its headlights on offers a beautiful panoramic view of the action from the top.
DR. DEEPAK SHIMKHADA
Manish