Wednesday going to Hakone to relax

After a bit of searching in the morning, we found the Odakyu Railway Line travel center at Shinjuku station, where we bought a Hakone Free Pass which was going to take care of all the travelling back and forth to Hakone. A very service minded and very good English speaking travel agent adviced us that we probably should not try to eat on the car (the next Romance train will be leaving in an hour and as it was not that much faster, so we opted instead to take the normal train. They look like a standard JR Tokyo line train.) and that turned out to be good advice (we had wolfed down the sandwiches that we had bought while waiting for the train instead) as it was really filled up in the beginning.

Arriving close to 2 hours later at Odawara station, we changed to another train to get the final distance to Hakone-Yumoto, at least on conventional trains. From Hakone-Yumoto we took the Hakone Tozan Railway the picturesque route to Gora, which was a pretty interesting experience, unfortunately the cars were packed and we ended up standing up again. The route was a zig zag route where the train changed between going forward and backward, as it was going up a mountain.

Arriving at Gora we decided to take a small break and go to a park that was a few hundred meters from the station. It turned out to be up all the way, and the park was really just a park, not a garden, so pretty ordinary. Going up to the park, my foodphile travel companion had noticed a restaurant selling gyoza close to the station. We decided to eat there on our way back to the station. The restaurant was small and nearly full but we found a table (again the option of chairs and no-chairs was possible) and my travle companions ability to understand most of the Kanji helped us out again, as there was absolutely no English possible, so my companion wrote our order down. After a few minutes the most delicious gyoza arrived, I sincerely regretted just ordering 5 after eating them. The gyoza seemed to have a larger content of vegetables than usual, which gave them a very light and melting sensation in the mouth. If we ever go back to Gora, we definitely have to visit that restaurant again.

After lunch we went back to the station to get into queue for the Hakone-Tozan cablecar at Gora station. The cablecar was going to bring us up to ropeway station at Souzan. As usual on this trip, the cars were filled to the brink, mostly with local tourists. We soon found out that our rather slightly exhausting walk up to the park, could have been reduced as there actually was a station on that level.

At Souzan we quickly switched to the Hakone Ropeway station (the mass of people was going in that direction) for the next part of the trip in a ropeway car to the Owakudani station (famous for its sulphur eggs).

After a short stay at Owakudani, it was cold and foggy so it was no possible to see Mt. Fuji, we continued on the next ropeway car towards Togendai where our boat would be ready to ferry us across Lake Ashi.

It may be noticed in the picture below that although there is a splendid view of Lake Ashi in the car, my foodcentric travel companion is fully focused on the just purchased sweet potato.

At Togendai was the base of the fake pirate ships that we took across the full length of lake Ashi to Hakone-Machi.

We passed several torii's along the way.

Arriving at Hakone-Machi we reasonably easy (because we followed some of the locals, as there were no signs at all for guidance) found the bus that was going to take us back to Hakone-Yumoto. We were now beginning to get tired, fortunately we were at the front of the queue so got us some seats for the rather lenghty trip in the mountain roads.

At Hakone-Yumoto we gave up trying to find the right shuttle bus and instead opted for a local taxi, that took us for a very short drive to the ryokan. The Kansuiro ryokan turned out to be quite close by, as we never got over the minimum fare. Arriving there was a bit of surprise. We had both imagined that the ryokan would be a bit away from the small road (which turned out to have quite a lot of traffic) but the entrance was directly at the road side. There was a slight stress as we had the full attention of all the employees, the reason for that became apparent during the evening and which I will write about in a later blog entry.

Finally we could rest.

Tuesday to Tokyo Tower, a walk in a garden and in a boat to Asakusa

Getting up early quickly became a problem for us, tuesday was even worse than yesterday.

We took the Yamanote circle line to Hamamatsucho station, that is only about 15 minuttes walk away from Tokyo Tower. So I unpacked the Nikon D90 outside the station in front of the World Trade Building and we walked towards the gate to the Zojoji temple, which stands across a somewhat busy road, to finally arrive past the front gate, to the area, where the Tokyo Tower also becomes fully visible behind the Zojoji temple.

The temple area has become slightly more touristy since 2½ years ago, with mechandise being sold by monks at a stall to the left just past the gate, which makes it a bit inconvenient to make an all wide shot of the premises.

Between the temple and the tower is a small park that was filled with school children and some adults having their lunch. Well we had started pretty late out on this day.

Tour buses and groups of school children had arrived, and more were arriving at the Tokyo Tower, so we hurried along and bought tickets for both the 150m and 250m level. No reason to just go halfway when one is finally there. The second elevator from to the top had a nice mirror in the ceiling which I just had to utilize.

It was still a bit foggy or cloudy so it was not possible to see that far, but we got a nice look over Tokyo, including the Rainbow Bridge which we had planned to get some nice night shoots from later on, naturally because we were planning to have dinner in Odaiba, with a view.

We quickly went through the souvenir sections both on the top levels and the main shop near the bottom, as we of course jumped of at the wrong floor. When the elevator goes down it stops on all the 4 (I think) floors before hitting the bottom. On these are museums (additional cost) and souvenir shops, so we got to see one more of these as we decided to walk the last floors down.

We then went back towards Hamamatsucho station, and as we were late, we had decided to buy some lunch in  a convenience store on the way and eat a picnic in the Kyu Shiba Rikyu garden that is very close by the station. It was the first garden visit this time, as every time, it was like stepping into a different world. Suddenly we could feel relaxed from the busy ongoings outside. Although the garden is very small and you can both see and hear every train on the station just outside, you still feel like you are in your own small relaxing place.

We sat down on the benches just inside the gaden with a view over most of it (it is not very big). We could study the 12 (I counted) workers tying up a tree for the winter so they don't break under the weight of snow. Although in Japan everything seems to go in threes when something needs to get done, one to do the work, one to warn people to go around and one to supervise, in this case most of them were busy tying the tree up, and I dont think they finished this particular tree in the time we spent at the garden.

I had visited the garden 2 years ago around the same time of year, but still managed to find some new places and views in the small garden. This has become a favorite place along with Rikugien garden at Komagome station, and my travelling companion much prefered this garden, due to its small and cozy size, and it really is a very beautifull Japanese styled garden.

I had recommended and I also really wanted to take the boat up Sumeida river to Asakusa, and although my travel companinion did not fully agree, as she was looking forward to seeing Asakusa, we went ahead and walked the one kilometer or so to Hinode Pier where the boats were. Of course we had a 30 minute wait before the next boat was leaving and as it was a 40 minute ride, we could already foresee that the sun would have set when we arrived at Asakusa. So I had to take a bit of flak for that from my companion, who also was beginning to worry a bit about dinner. It was still only 4:30pm but a foodphile has a different time perspective in regards to food. :-)

After a nice boat ride, though not as nice as I remembered it, where one gets a different view of Tokyo, we finally arrived at Asakusa pier as the sun was setting. Then I got confused, I was pretty sure I remembered the walk to the temple, but after consulting the maps I managed to create a 90 degree turn wrong, so we had to walk a 100m back after my miswalk, which I got to hear a bit about.

But finally we where there and it was as touristy, but at least less filled with people as we were close to closing time.

The shops along the way to the actual temple of course had a lot of duplicate stuff, but it was quite interesting to browse and some things were shopped. The actual temple is under renovation, so it was completely covered up, the mirror gate at the other end was fully available though for some nicer shots with less people in them.

We went back slightly quicker as shops were closing up and we went looking for the place that had been set as our designated eating place for the evening, a well known and recommend old unagi place. I must say proudly that without any detour I found it, and they had a sign on the door that due to some circumstances the restaturant was closed for the night, and as we approached the door the lights went out.

Below is a picture of the restaurant (it looks worse and more shabby in real life), and strangely I did not feel that much regret that it was closed.

Instead we walked back towards the Ginza line station and started looking for a restaurant close by the station. We quickly found one which looked like it mostly catered to locals but still with parts of the menu available in English. There was a section for squatters and one with chairs, we choose the chair one.

And we got our unagi after all with tea.

At the way back from Shinjuku station we went to the restaurant floors on Tashakimya and bought a crepe suzette with banana and ice cream as dessert, before heading back to the hotel after what had become a long day after all.

Mitaka, Harajuku and Shinjuku on a parkless Monday

Monday seems to be the day all parks and gardens are closed in Tokyo, so I have still a visit outstanding to any of them. Today with had tickets for the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka.

We left a bit late from the hotel and after a 23 minute train drive from Shinjuku station we reached Mitaka. Which looked pretty much the same as it had 2 years ago. It still has its nice bakery and confectionary shops at the station and the outside is still slightly confusing in regards to which stairs one needs to take to get down at the right place. We had decided to walk to the museum as it is only about a kilometer from the station.

As we were arriving shortly before noon at the Studio Ghibli Museum, it turned out to be quite filled, as much as they allow it to be filled (limited number of tickets per day rule). Although I was there more than 2 years ago it was pretty much still as enjoyable.

It was more crowded (slightly) and a lot more noisy than last time, so a bit more queuing (eg. to get to the roof), and the souvenir shop was filled to the brink. Got a few, mostly gifts though. We decided not have lunch here, but had a drink from one of the vending machines along the way back to the station, and for once the coffee was actually quite good.

In Shinjuku we switched to the Yamanote circle line and went to Harajuku. We were now getting quite hungry and after a quick excursion down the Takeshi street, we retraced our steps back to the opposite of the station and went for a Chinese lunch. Which was not the best one but within acceptable limits. The toilet was quite interesting with the water tap on top of the toilet, so when you flushed the water ran from the tap into the bassin of the toilet and you could wash your hands. That water would then be reused next time someone flushed the toilet. Nice water saving effort.

It was getting past 4 in the afternoon, so we made a run for the Meiji Shrine, which turned out to be good idea as they were preparing to close when we got there. We went for a quick round and when we were returning to the exit at the station it was beginning to turn dark.

We spent some time going down and up Takeshi street, browsing, before deciding that it was getting pretty late and that we were tired, so we went back to the hotel to get a quick rest and continue on to the electronics section of Shinjuku to stock up on a few things.

But after a short stay at the hotel, it was now getting around 7 in the evening, my travel companion wanted to see a night view of Tokyo. So we went to the business district and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, it was anyhow within walking distance of the hotel. After circling about a bit around the building, roads are sometimes at several levels, and sometimes it can a challenge to find the entrance to a building, we discovered that the access (at least at evening and tonight) was not available due to security reasons, So after a few pictures, we went towards the electronics area (still open as it was not 10 yet) and did a bit of browsing before turning back towards the hotel.

My food loving travel companion was in the mood for McDonalds, and I was not opposing that (needed something I knew for the stomach), got my favorite Teriyaki Burger as a takeaway and that was the dinner for today.

Ginza, Akihabara and Shibuya on a Sunday

The good thing about this morning was waking up and not immediately having an urge to visit the toilet. As my stomach obviously is getting better, my travel companion could then convince me to experience more 'interesting' eating places later in the day.

We decided to follow our planned itenary and went to Ginza before noon. Did a bit of a walkabout (some of the streets were blocked from traffic as it is pedestrian day on a Sunday), taking a few pictures and finally ending up at the Sony building. Going through the showrooms, the most interesting part was actually the headphones. Sony has made some rather large looking (a bit like having a tire on your ear, but really soft) headphones with a very nice bass sound. I was thinking about maybe having a pair of those to listen to 'my' music without disturbing the surroundings.

We had started out pretty late so we decided to find our planned lunch place. The strange thing about coming to Ginza was how familiar it felt, I had been there maybe twice a couple of years ago, but I recognized the station, the surroundings and how to get to the Sony building (close, only took one street wrong) and I had a pretty good feel where the Kabuki-za theater is, which we are going to visit later on. But back to today.

My food loving companion had found this Gompachi chain of restaurants, she wanted to try out, and one of them was in Ginza. Without much ado we found it, with the help of a little pre-work in Google Street view again. First reaction, "There is another outlet close by, is there not?", as the place looked like a dump and there was this old guy, seriously down on his luck, who was sorta doing some maintenance on the rather wild growing shrubs and trees around the restaurant. On our first try, we totally missed to find the entrance, suspicion was that it was somewhere beneath the green stuff, and a look into the windows showed a totally empty restaurant. My comment, "Are you really sure you wanna go there?".

Fortunately my companion had found out that there was another restaurant from the chain close by, so after walking around in some slightly depressing looking back alleys for a while (this was obviously the slum, in Ginza this means high-end slum though), we gave up, and feeling hungry for the first time after arriving, I suggested we go back. We could give it a try, how bad can it be, we could just choose some well-cooked items, right.

Surprisingly, coming back along the side of the building beside the restaurant, we realized that a group of restaurants had a shared entrance and that there was a dress code (seemed a bit radical for a potential dump-looking place). But how were we surprised, as it turned out to be a really nice inside, and when we came into the restaurant it became obvious that this was a style they had chosen intentionally, the slightly old worn down look. And it is always fun to be yelled a greeting by all the employees in the restaurant. The food turned out to be really nice, my Teriyaki Chicken with rice and cold soba was delicious and I enjoyed the dinner very much especially the juicy char grilled chicken. The clientel was primarily older Japanese women with a few young and middle aged couples as well, and tourists (which I teased my companion about, choosing a touristy eating place). Especially a large European family caught my eye as all the teenage and young women in this family obviously had had a bad reaction to Japanese food as they all seemed to have gained several kilos after they took on their small dresses this morning. I was slightly worried that the small dresses might explode of their bodies, and as all the young women of the family seemed to have this condition it was probably geneticilly instead of just bad taste. I am sorry but sometimes rudeness is needed to save the world of having to watch this.

The toilets were fortunatelly only partly kept in the same old style, although it took me few seconds pressing all kinds of stuff, before realing the little round metal button on the floor was the flush button, and I nearly tore out the waterpipe when I turned the water off after washing my hands. Kind of nice keeping the worn down look in the toilets as well.

On our way back to the station we visited an Okinawa grocery shop on the way (with all things Okinawan), greeted by some slightly painfull ambient music (a woman with a very repetive screeching voice blarred out with some traditional sounding Japanese music accompining) on entry. Strangely enough, after about 20 seconds I started looking for the CD section as it was kind of interesting in sort of a masochistic way, I did not find it though. We ended up buying some cream cola (not especially nice, but drinkable), a dring for my companion (I forget what) and a small cake which challenged my recovering stomach more than I liked, so I only had one bite. Maybe will return to the shop though, they had some nice stuff, especially a lot of nice Sake.

Then we moved on to Akihabara. We did a quick check of the streets, but as it was Sunday afternoon and really filled with people, we quickly decided to go for Yodobashi as my companion wanted to look at a camera. I did a bit of a big walkabout on the first floor as I was confusing this outlet for the Osaka one, but after I got my bearings it was back to bussiness. We found the Ricoh CX2 (we noticed afterward that it looked like this camera was everywhere used for comparison on every other camera) and our interest was obviously so intense that it caught the eye of a sales person (quite impressive with the amount of people that were there). He did a very good job with his limited English of selling the camera and my companion ended up with an extra battery (wise choice) and a leather casing (initially a bad choice as it was expensive, but after fondling it a bit, I must say it really is very nice soft leather and well worth its price). Getting tired now we decided to take a break, go back to the hotel and charge our batteries (and the cameras).

Arriving around 8 in the evening in Shibuya, a mass of, primarily very young people seemed to fill up the streets everywhere. The place was buzzling with life. Without any detour we quickly managed to find the chosen restaurant for the evening, Mo Mo Paradise, again part of a chain of restaurants. This chain specializing in all you can eat (for 90 minutes) Shabu Shabu and Sukiyaki among other things. Deciding on Shabu Shabu (I like Sukiyaki a lot, but raw egg seemed like a less prudent choice considering the state of my stomach, which was recovering, but far from any kind of robustness yet). Havind experienced a rather boring tasting Shabu Shabu in a restaurant in Copenhagen, this was quite the opposite, although the Sesame sauce was better in Copenhagen, the meat in Shibuya was delicious and this together with an already very nice lunch turned out to be a really good food day. As an added bonus, I got a steam facial during the dinner as well, and had occasionally problems seeing through my steamed up glasses. Both lunch and dinner places are worthwhile to revisit some time in the future.

After some good food all day, my stomach has decided to calm down and appreciate the food, not fully working but less annoying.

Night Time in Shinjuku

Departure from Copenhagen on time and ditto from the transit airport in Vienna, finally then on our way to Narita airport in Tokyo in a Boeing 777. Bad thing about the 777 is that it has 3 seats at the window (3-4-3) and with a filled up plane that meant I got to enjoy a middle seat, fortunately my aisle seat mate was a tiny Japanese woman, unfortunately my front seat mate was a huge Polish guy, who had to put the seat all the way back to get enough room, which meant I spent the trip with the personal screen slightly up my nose and a slightly akward position when meals were being served. All in all it seemed to become the standard slightly uncomfortable and tiring flight as usual when going to Japan, but (there is always a but) half way a stomach trouble showed its ugly head. So I spent the reminder of the trip trying to avoid going to the toilet all the time and when I could, there were problems. Had in the end to give up to eat much of the breakfast.

Arriving at Narita the queue at the immigration counters seemed endless (queuing to get into the queue for the counters) but a very hands on guidance of some guidance officers speed matters up quite a lot. So in the end it took less than half an hour. But it still took so long that when we finally came to the luggage belt, there were just 2 lonely suitcases being moved around on the belt (ours), and one of them had been scraping along the edge that it may not be reusable further on (actually its it first trip, but anyhow it was cheap and may be it should just be replaced here in Japan for the return trip). The luggage handler seemed a bit happy to see us, because now he finally could shut down the belt. Smoothly through customs, they did not even want us to open the suitcases. But we had arrived so early that the travel service bureau where we wanted to buy our SUICA and N'EX rebate tickets was not open yet. No problem, I needed to sepnd some time on a toilet anyway.

Arriving after an hour or so later in Shinjuku, it suddenly turned out to be a small problem that the 'New South Gate' at Shinjuku station had been reciommended as the shortest way to the hotel. Problem was that it did not provide the street access I had anticipated, so the planned route walking to the hotel did not exist. Instead after some ups and downs (literally) at Tashimya Times Square, we managed to spot the bridge over the tracks and we found an even shorter route to the hotel. Thanks to google street view we had a good idea how things looked in the neighbourhood of the hotel, so it was easy find it. Checkin time was of course first at 14:00 and we had arrived early, so we left the luggage at the hotel and went to do some local exploring. After a short trip to the hotel's toilet of course, which was very sofisticated, automatic seat opening on entry and so forth.

The local Takashimaya seemed like a good bet for some exploring and at the end of the mall, a 8 floor Tokyo Hands has been built, so we went there first for some initial browsing, followed by a trip to the basement of the mall for world food (food in all stages of preparement, from raw to ready to eat). After some time there we decided to go up to the 13th 14th floor an find a restaurant to eat (my stomach was now giving me serious problems, and I was beginning to panic when I was too far away from a toilet). After some browsing my companion gave in, and we ate at Carmel, where I on previous trip had eaten their chicken omelette rice and it felt like a safe choice given my current condition. It was probably as good as last time, but I was really not able to enjoy it much,

We continued to go around a bit, but when the time approached check-in time, we went back to the hotel to checkin, shower and get a few hours of needed rest.

It had now become 7 in the evening, and we went for a quick look around in the electronics area, where there are several big Yodobashi's, a main , a camera, a game shop, a watch and so on  (all with several floors).

Additionally we found a dedicated camera shop (primarily DSLRs) with a whole floor dedicated to tripods! We then went for a restaurant in Lumine mall, but as there are several Lumine malls, Lumine 1 and 2 and probably 3 as we did not find the restaurant situated in the Lumine, and it was now becoming quite apparent to me that I had to very careful what  I put into my stomach (and Takashimaya was closing, actually it had been trying to close for an hour or so) so we went to some mega shopping in an am/pm convenient store. For what amounts to 130 kr we probably bought food n drinks that would have amounted to the triple sum in Copenhagen.

Late in the evening (it was nearly 10pm when we got back) the stomach stabilized somewhat down to 3 hours visits now. Looking forward to a better day tomorrow. Although we have already found out that our itenary is not going to be, we forgot to check the opening hours for the Imperial Palace East Garden which is unfortunately not open on a Sunday (as it was last time) :-( so we have to make some new plans, lets see what the weather is like, today it was t-shirt until around 9pm!