The cruise was proceeding down the Nihonbashi River, which flows under the Metropolitan Expressway

While there is a lot of talk about the elevated Metropolitan Expressway being built directly over the Nihonbashi Bridge, as if it were a lid, there is not much talk about what is under the bridge. It is not a north-south problem, but an up-and-down problem. Even when people come to the bridge, many look up at the statue of a Qilin that sits in the gap between the motorway's elevated tracks, but few look down at the bridge. Indeed, looking out over the water as if caressing it, there are no remnants of the fish market that existed here until the Taisho era (1912-1926), only the pillars supporting the elevated expressway. Most of the talk about Nihonbashi is directed upwards.

Under these circumstances, most people probably do not even know the name of the river that flows under the bridge called Nihonbashi. The name of the river that flows under Nihonbashi is Nihonbashi River. It is difficult to determine whether the name "Nihonbashi" was chosen because the bridge spans the Nihonbashi River, or whether the name "Nihonbashi River" was chosen because the river flows over a bridge called Nihonbashi. In fact, there was no official name for the Nihonbashi River during the Edo period, and it was not until 1882 that the river was officially named the Nihonbashi River. In other words, it seems that the bridge that has existed since the Edo period has always been the senior bridge, and the river was named after it.

When I stopped on the Nihonbashi Bridge to look at the surface of the modest Nihonbashi River, a cruise ship had just left the Nihonbashi Pier. A cruise ship with many people on board was about to pass under the Nihonbashi Bridge and head towards Tokyo Bay.