Surprisingly, Day 10 was not the end of our trip to Japan. Even more surprisingly, now that I am back in Australia, I’m not even going to abandon my updates (though they will be slow). Hey, I’m getting old and one day in my dotage (i.e. next week) I may want to look back and actually remember what it is that we did when we spent all that money to go to Japan.
Day 11 was another travel day. Our final trip on the Shinkasen to get back to Tokyo. Of course to get to the Shinkasen there was the small matter of an hour and a half bus ride first. We said goodbye to our hosts at the hotel and looked out wistfully at the mountains that were saturated in brilliant sunshine.
There were a couple of Canadians on the bus and as we drove past they mountains on our way out they were reminiscing about the different treks down the mountains that they’d made. They seemed to be at something of a different level to us. There was discussion about sticking to safe ridge lines as they descended off-piste with their avalanche gear. I glanced out the window at the insanity that they were talking about and was quite happy with my 88km/hr effort and my really piss weak jump.
We made it all the way into Tokyo and our next hotel and the kids were at least happy with the fact that although one of the beds was a fold out couch and another a portable that had been added to the room, they at least all had a bed. We arrived in Tokyo in mid afternoon which gave a bit of time for us to tick something of the list of things we wanted to do. We went looking for a stationary shop. Not just any stationary shop though, we went to Ito-yain Ginza; one of the oldest stationary shops in Japan. We’re talking about 2 buildings full of paper, pens, gadgets and all sorts of things. Michael opted to stay in the hotel. Ginza itself was eye opening as it has been described as the 5th Avenue of Tokyo. Louis Vuitton, Prada, Tiffany’s … there was an endless array of shops that I didn’t even feel that I could afford to walk into, let alone buy something at.
Ito-ya was nestled amongst them and whilst it was possible to spend thousands of dollars on a single pen, it was all possible to spend a single dollar on a pen.
I didn’t take a lot of photos, but these give an indication of the variety and selection of paper that was available. If you were included and were sufficiently cashed up you could have your own personal note book assembled for you. Choose your cover material, paper quality, colours, binding option … the list goes on. Fortunately for my wallet (and less so for the kids) we didn’t have time to wait around long enough to go through the process and then have it assembled for us. As it was we managed to spend a couple of hours there perusing and wishing and negotiating the fact that certain members of the family really didn’t need $30 notebooks for school. There were some tense and sulky moments, let me tell you!
The other thing that became apparent through the tour of the two stores over which the collection was spread was that Sam knows a surprising amount about his pens. Apparently he’s quietly acquired a bit of a collection via internet purchase over the the last couple of years. He was able to let us know which ones were well priced and which were only available in Japan for instance. It meant that we walked away with a few select purchases that didn’t break the bank.
Then it was time to try and find some food. Given that we were in Ginza, the expectations that we’d find something reasonably priced weren’t high. We had pretty much decided that our best bet was to head back to the hotel and find something close to where we were staying. It turned out that we found a soup place in one of the underground approaches to the subway and ended up having a really good feed.
Oh and just for the fun of it, here's origami Sam:
And that was Day 11.
