Tour Report on Thursday, February 23 (Weekday Tour)

Tokyo Free Walking Tour thanks all four wonderful guests, who joined the tour on February 23.

It was a cold and windy day, slightly raining at the beginning of the tour.

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One of the guests said he is going to participate in the 2017 Tokyo Marathon next Sunday.
35,500 people from all over the world will run the central Tokyo on the new course, starting from Shinjuku and finishing at Tokyo Station.

Tokyo Station and Gyoko-dori Street (the wide street which connects Tokyo Station and Imperial Palace) are on our tour course.

On Monday’s newspapers, you will probably find a runner crossing the finish line, in front of Tokyo Station as a backdrop.

The Tokyo Marathon 2017 will be held under strict security.

More than 10,000 security officers and 230 security cameras will keep watch over people along the course. The course will be patrolled also from the sky, by drones and airships.

The unique way of patrolling might be the “Running Police” installed since 2015.
94 physically-trained police officers are going to run the marathon course with runners, taking turns in 10 kilometers. If you stand by the course, you will find them in every couple of minutes.
The role of the Running Police is to find a suspicious person or object mixed among the crowd; they carry wearable cameras with GPS, which send images simultaneously to the police headquarters.
Runners in the past Tokyo Marathon actually said that they could feel safe with Running Police in the same lane.

We are looking forward to the world’s safest marathon!

(Images from Tokyo Marathon Foundation, news sites (Mainichi, Nikkei, Sankei, Minkei))

By Hiroshi N.

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Tokyo Free Walking Tour has regular tours every Saturday and has irregular tours in weekdays and Sundays.
If you are in Tokyo, why not come and join us?
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