Waking up this morning was so difficult – as was getting my bearings!
I made it down to have hotel breakfast this morning and had a very bizarre combination of salad, cheese and eggs to start the day. I was staying in a very Western hotel, and possibly should have tried somewhere a little more traditional – or maybe just shouldn’t have paid for breakfast at the hotel. I was really looking forward to something perhaps more akin to my wonderful experience at The Regent in Taipei – but something more Japanese, so maybe rice, vegetables, fish…
This is the only not-so great part of the trip, really. Tokyo is filled with all kinds of food and drink, at all times of the day and night, so not having the best breakfast in the hotel is literally the least of the worries!
The coffee was a nice wake-up call, but I really do like a strong coffee in the morning, and this was not a strong coffee – I had to find a supplementary coffee beverage in 7/11 to add to the caffeine levels for the day. Note for tomorrow – possibly skip breakfast and make something myself?
Over breakfast, I made a very vague plan for my day today. Some trains, some walking, some shopping, some food, and LOTS of exploring.
My first stop of the day was Tokyo Station. As a vague transport nerd, it makes sense to go and visit the main station in the city…
However – I got completely and utterly lost inside!
The “classic” Marounouchi entrance leads you into an absolute maze of shops, restaurants, kiosks, and Character Street – where you can buy various different characters from popular series. I really wanted to see if I could find NHK’s Domo in Character Street – which would also then mean I needed to find Character Street…
To say that the station is like a warren inside is being simple to warrens. There are so many shops, coridoors that lead off, and it is so, so, so difficult to find an exit – or sometimes even a sign to say which level you are on, and which way you need to go.
After around 20 minutes, I managed to find the NHK Shop in Character Street however sadly the only Domo characters they had were not for sale :(
Character Street was in level -2, so my plan was to come up a few levels of the station, have a look at some of the trains perhaps, and then leave, heading towards Ginza but walking – it isn’t very far.
However. Leaving the station is another matter altogether. It took me around 40 minutes to leave, as I was so confused about where I was, and couldn’t see any signs for exits. I took a combination of lifts and escalators up a few levels, whilst feeling more and more panicked about being trapped forever in an underground maze, and finally found an exit to the Ginza side of the station.
It was time for lunch, so I headed over to McDonalds – my aim is to always try one McDonalds meal when I am in a different country, as the menu is always different!
Ginza has so many interesting shops and places to go – I was really interested to look at stationery shops, as some friends had made requests of pens and paper they were looking for.
Itoya was all I expected and more – tons of beatiful cards, books, pens, pencils, inks, art suppplies, craft stock and stickers. However there were a few floors out of use due to some internal refitting taking place, and the rest of the floors were absolutely packed with people shopping for stationery so it was a hurried experience rather than being relaxed.
I visited three other stationery stores that I’d added on my map, and then visited Matsuya department store for a browse, and then visited Ginza SIX shopping centre, to pick up some Blue Bottle Coffee beans for a couple of friends who said they were big fans of the coffee!
I am not a very shopping-y person so returned back to the hotel during the start of rush-hour via Higashi-Ginza station on the Asakusa line, to Shimbashi, then back to Akihabara on the Yamanote line.
It was at this point, on a quite packed, yet well behaved train, I saw my first Shinkansen train leaving Tokyo station and my breath was taken away!!! I also noticed that if you stand at the front of the train, you can watch the train driver perform their role – which is certainly a lot busier and involves a lot more arm movements and pointing than any other train driver I have seen before – wow!
I hopped back to the hotel for some decompression time and a cup of tea. My washing was waiting for me – I had given the hotel a load of washing from the first half of this trip when I was mooching in HK, Macao and Taipei, and it was washed, neatly pressed and wrapped like a gift, and returned within 20 hours – amazing!
I felt like sushi again for dinner, and so visited Sushiro once more. Let’s just say that I did not correctly join the queue for the counter service and accidentally joined the queue for a booth, and the wait was 40 minutes! Oh dear… I now know how to change the language on the welcome machine, select COUNTER service and there will be very little or no wait at all…
I played the Sushiro game and won a plastic sushi coin purse, delivered to my by conveyor belt! Such fun and silliness.
Salmon sushi with green tea, and the instructions for use of the Sushiro Coin Purse – so much so that I didn’t understand what it even was until I took it back to the hotel and looked it up!
Leave a Reply