Okay, so I am a couple of days behind. With the transfer to Tokyo, where everything is open until about 10pm at night (or later) we were getting back to the hotel way to late and tired for me to sit up and capture the day’s events. Now we’re on a train back up to Nagano on our way to Hakuba and I have plenty of time to fill you in.
So, Day 5:
We packed up our skis and sent them off to wait for us in Hakuba so that we’d have a little bit less to lug around Tokyo and fit into our hotel room, then packed everything else, took a coupe of photos and jumped on the bus to get back to Nagano.
We were sitting happily on the bus when Sam casually pointed out some snow monkeys sitting on the side of the road. To say that Caroline was excited was an understatement. I felt a huge weight of guilt lift now that it would no longer mean that I had seen them and she hadn’t. The best part was that about half a kilometre on the bus stopped at the next stop, then turned around and went back past the monkeys a second time before heading down the mountain. It couldn’t have been scripted better!
We made it to Nagano with little time to spare before the train was departing for Tokyo. That meant that there was no time for lunch and that things weren’t starting out to well in the ‘eat on time’ department. It was strangely reminiscent of our last visit. We opted to stop short of Tokyo in Ueno as that enabled us to make a connection to the train to Akihabara where we’d booked the hotel. Then there was just the small matter of finding our way to the hotel. I had screen shotted a couple of photos before we’d left to give some clue and fortunately we’d only walked about half a kilometre in the wrong direction before Caroline prompted me to double check that we were following the right train line. I was only ninety degrees out. D’oh. Course corrected, we found the Super Hotel which turned out to be a quite tall, narrow building that was clearly optimising its small space. Tight confines meant for flexible sleeping sleeping arrangements and after only a minor meltdown from the princess, Thomas ended up sleeping in the single bunk that was above our bed, while Emily did the same in the room that Michael and Sam were in. As per usual, Sam elected for sleeping on the floor rather than share with his brother.
We pretty much dumped the luggage and ran, with food the first order of business. The very first place that we came across appealed to Michael because he saw a picture of Gyoza. We stopped and had a small gyoza feast which sated everyone enough that we thought we’d get through to dinner.
We went for a stroll around Akihabara (Electric Town) and visited a couple of shops, checking out the electronics, models advertisements for maid cafes and the other eclectic offerings of the area before deciding it was time for dinner.
Oh and if you're thinking of collecting some storm troopers, here's a collection that would make a good start:
The one at the front would have been almost up to my, chest.
The 8th floor of the Yodabashi building is a collection of restaurants and for convenience we decided to eat there. We managed a full circuit before trying a couple of places. Unfortunately a group of six seemed to present a seating challenge at the first couple of options and we ended up at a pizza place.
There were some interesting offerings. Nothing too over the top, but just different enough to get you to read the menu twice. Sam opted for the one with the ‘salted rape blossom’ (still don’t know what it was other than salty)
and Thomas opted for the pizza topped with french fries. Emily, not a fan of pizza at the best of times went for the plate of french fries. Given this first picture is of the pizza topped with french fries;
you can imagine Emily’s disappointment, when this showed up as the plate of french fries:
I went for some pizza that had won some competition or other and while it wasn’t offensive, it wasn’t really anything to write home about either. Caroline had a seafood pasta which she enjoyed.
We retired back to the hotel where they had a selection of pillows on offer, though not quite enough of the particular types to satisfy all of us. We made do though as the only pillow in the room itself was as long ‘body pillow’ that felt like it was filled with small slightly crushable plastic beads. It was like a slightly mouldable concrete log.
Another quirk of the hotel was that it had an onsen, though only one. That meant separate times for Women and Men to bathe. Women had from 0630-930 and then another session that ended at 2050. Men had from 2100 until -0620. When you leave the hotel earlyish and get back late, that wasn’t quite suiting Caroline’s desired bathing times!
We did have an ensuite … it was a fixed until much like the one in the hotel that we first stayed in. A tiny bath, sink and toilet. Functional and space-saving!
Day 6
We awoke having experienced differing levels of sleep, most bordering or failing to meet the acceptable level and after breakfast headed for the first stop of the day. A cat café. We’d seen it the night before and agreed to go back. On the fifth (or there about) floor of the building there was a café full of cats. Caroline, Michael and Emily opted to go in and play wit the cats and have a drink, while Sam, Thomas and I chose to wander around Akihabara a little more.
The cat café looked impressive from the outside, with a network of suspended platforms for the cats to climb all over and lots of toys to play with. Caroline tells me that there were somewhere in the order of a dozen cats in there and all three participants had a good time.
The rest of us explored a tower devoted to anime, from posters and figurines to videos and costumes.
We linked up again after that experience and headed off to the tourist hotspot that is the Sky Tree. 634m high, its 300m taller than the Eiffel tower. There’s two observation decks, one at 35o metres and another at 450 metres (which costs an extra $10 to get to). We opted to be tight arses and only went to the first platform. Sam opted to stay with his feet on the ground. Emily, who keeps telling us she is afraid of heights decided to come up, but wasn’t so keen on more than a cursory glance out the window and was adamantly disinterested in the glass floor section. Possibly the most impressive part of the experience was the elevator ride. 350 metres in about 50 seconds and you could barely tell that you were moving! Probably worth the 40 minute wait to get a ticket and get up there!
One of the things that we were going to be forced to do again was go to a Pokemon Centre. I happened to google and find out that there was within minutes of the skytower and so we were forced into a deviation. Fortunately it didn’t take tooooo long. Long enough to be bored, not so long that I felt the need to drag anyone out by the ears.
We had also browsed our way through a TV themed shop where you could buy all sorts of things linked to your favourite Japanese TV show. You could even buy toilet paper so that you could wipe your butt on your (least?) favourite character!
Having seen one tourist spot, Caroline had us headed for Shibuya, a shopping and night-life district. It was also about half way across Tokyo from the Sky Tree but added to our subterranean exploration of the city by subway.
Shibuya is home to what I think of as ‘that intersection’. I remember being a little disappointed when I was here last time that we didn’t come across it. From all the lights I had thought that it was perhaps located in Akihabara, but not so. The instant I emerged from the subway I knew where I was and crossing the intersection lived up to everything that I could imagine. Its like 3 armies of foot soldiers all facing off and deciding to charge at the same moment. We were looking for dinner though so didn’t hang around to appreciate it too much.
What happens when the crossing lights go green!
We opted for local fare, heading into a dark little basement restaurant where something like a Korean BBQ you could choose to cook your food at the table (though in a wok-like bowl, rather than on a BBQ like Korean or teppanyaki. Caroline, Thomas and I opted for that while Emily went for the safety of beef fillet as did Michael. Though he mixed it up with meatballs that were more like a skewered sausage than a ball and were apparently made from beef tongue. In fact at first glance through the menu you could be forgiven for thinking that all the meat on it was tongue as it certainly dominated. Sam was brave enough to order the beef tongue stew which he enjoyed when it arrived. All in all, it was another successful dinner; such a contrast to our last trip here!
After dinner, we decided to take advantage of the Starbucks that over-looked ‘that intersection.’ After lining up for hot chocolate and coffee, we managed to work our way into some seats, because surprisingly we weren’t the first ones to have the idea of checking out the intersection from that vantage point! Hard to believe, but true! By the time that we managed to get there most of the shops had closed and so the foot-traffic was much reduced. A little disappointing, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Day 7
The day dawned with a list of things that we wanted to accomplish; a mixture of culture and capitalism. I took the time over breakfast to work out which subway stops were nearest each attraction and planned as much of a circuitous route as I could to minimise travel time.First stop was to be the Imperial Palace (the East Gardens to be precise). We mobilised everyone and headed out the door. We even found the right stop without too many hassles. The moat and wall of the palace provide an instant first impression, but it was when we got to the gate that everyone’s jaws dropped. Most of the photos that I took are yet to make it to an internet friendly medium, but I snapped a couple with the phone just to include them here.
The gardens were lovely and would be even more impressive through spring. There were a few blossoms on the tree and they gave just a taste of how it must look in full bloom. I was pleasantly surprised that there were any there for us to see at all. We took a nice leisurely walk through before we headed off to the next part of our day’s adventure.
Next on the agenda was to find a shop where Emily had bought clothes two years previously that she fell in love with. That had been in Kyoto, but google told me that one of the stores was nearby to where we were the previous night in Shibuya. Back to the subway we went. When we arrived I google mapped our way and found that it was going to be a twenty minute walk. Needless to say not everyone was impressed with the thought of walking for twenty minutes to find a girls’ clothes store. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d manage to leave my carefully marked up subway map back in the hotel during a brief stop after the palace. Things got so much better when we walked around for another twenty minutes trying find the shop. In the end we had to concede defeat and assume that they had moved somewhere else.
We had been going to take in the Meiji shrine which wasn’t far from there, but with the time lost in trying to find the clothes store, we gave that up as lost as well. Instead we headed off for a second round of bloody Pokemon because the boys (well, Michael and Sam insisted) convinced us that there were things that they could get at the Mega Centre that
That took us to dinner time. We were once again in a shopping metropolis. I was discussing with Emily the fact that I was surprised that we’d walked past so many shops selling cute clothes when I’d been prepared to buy her some just because we hadn’t been able to find the store that she remembered so fondly from two years previous. A light bulb went on and her eyes lit up as she said, “I didn’t know you were prepared to buy me some!” Suddenly the head was on a swivel left and right and we ended up in a shop within about 30 seconds. A couple of skirts and tops later and it really was time for dinner. We found a Chinese place (just to keep rounding out our ‘other cultures in japan’ dining experiences) and it was a winner. We were lucky to squeeze six of us in and everyone left having enjoyed the food immensely (much of it being about 5 variations of fried chicken).
A stroll through some shoe shops (where they mostly didn’t have our sizes) took us back to the train and eventually the hotel via one small detour for crepes.
And that my friends sums up the last 3 days of our adventures. Whew! The train is just about to pull into Nagano for us to head to Hakuba and because I’m Shinkasening the right way, this Asahi is just about done as well. More soon
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