Ah Wilderness

Shinagawa Station.  I did not take this highly retouched pic!

Everything has its place.  Everything has its order.  This is the first hotel I’ve ever stayed at with a seismic activity warning in the room (“Tokyo sits on the Kanto Fragment Plate.”  Not to be confused with the Mikasa plates Nan owns).  And red lights in the hallway in case of emergency.  Please, don’t wear your complimentary slippers outside your room.  Going to the exercise room?  Please, take advantage of the change room on site.  Etc.  I had an excellent sleep.  SS so so.  But we have the breakfast buffet included in our rate, a lovely mix of the usual (yogurt, fruit, eggs, bacon) and the unusual (persimmons, nicone, white and orange peaches) as well as the Asian (pickles, miso soup, Chinese porridge, peanuts, cabbage).

We were up early and away early.  Humid.  Sticky.  Like August in Toronto.  Believe it or not we navigated the subway with aplomb.  Although the white gloved attendants did not physically shove us into the car, we were squished in like sardines.  In Japanese and English we were reminded, to, Please, don’t talk on your cell phone.  And there wasn’t a whisper.  No chat, no phone, no pips from cellphone games. It was weirdly sci-fi.  I felt guilty whispering to SS that our stop was coming up.

 

Tokyo Central, modelled after Amsterdam's station

We started with a nice walk in the Imperial Gardens but, guess what?  They are closed Friday. Who closes on Friday?  Instead we took a walk through Ginza, the tony shopping area, but most of the boutiques were closed (the rich have to sleep off the foie gras, they can’t just roll out of bed and pull out the Amex).  Mid-morning we tried a Starbucks to see if it was any better than the tepid instant at the hotel, which was a suitable disappointment; and nearly three dollars for a short.  Off to the National Museum of Contemporary Art.  It was housed in a non-descript bunker-like fortress with an uneven mix of exceptional Japanese and European art (Klee, Dubuffet, Arp), and somewhat tiresome new media. 

I don't know

Afterwards we took lunch in an office building.  It sounds odd, but almost every office tower has the standard uninviting empty lobby you see the planet over, except here there are five floors above, and three below, hosting restaurants, bars and shops.  Signs outside with pictures indicate the “B” level (below street level) or floor “up” you need to go to.  It was a point and order lunch, neither of us quite sure, but in the end I believe we avoided whale.

Following lunch we walked to the kite museum.  This was no small feat.  It’s hosted on the fifth floor of an office building, no signage and no English characters.  I have a local SIM card, Google told us we were there, but how would we know?  In about 600 square feet they had a pretty decent history of kites in Japan.  A man who had been to Alberta talked to us in stilted English about his experiences in Canada.  It was peculiar and wonderful and inspiring.  En route we had encountered an ambulance; the first siren we’ve heard.  So we stopped curbside to let it pass and the driver thanked us with a wave.  For a city of such intense order (it’s like jay walking may result in hari kari) it was astonishing to see no one give way.

Umbrella lockers.  How smart is that?

SS says the palace walls date to medieval times from the original Edo Shogun's castle

Antique tiny kites

Miniature kites

SS stands next to a Santa Maria kite

By mid-afternoon it was time for siesta.

For dinner we took the subway to Roppongi.  In the midst of the Friday evening rush hour we were, this time, crammed into packed cars by the white gloved guards, more than literal sardines.  I have never appreciated being 185 cm so much.  We had a nice meal at an American-oriented place recommended in Fodor's, called  Roti (the guy at the table next to us talked about his brother’s oil well) and later, through a sea of Waldo’s and various other festive costumes, we made our way back to the hotel.

I just don't know

YVR to NRT AC3 J Class (aka business)

A Weird Selection of International Toys on Display at YVR

In a sea of rain the clouds parted on Wednesday, October 29, and we embarked on the 11 hour trip to Narita.  Which is about as close to Tokyo as Yokohama, but there you go—a goodly distance from your arrival point.  For savvy travellers, Haneda is the airport closest to Tokyo, and a better choice for arrivals.  ANA flies direct from Vancouver, AC from Toronto once a day.  But we were up front in one of AC’s smaller 767’s for the 10 plus hour direct to Narita.

The lunch options were standard AC fare (meaning reminiscent of economy class back in the 1980s).  SS had the Japanese option which was an assortment of appetizers, miso soup and a sliced beef.  I had the Canadian version of that: Beef, asparagus, mashed potatoes and salad.  We both watched the Rob Brydon Steve Coogan sequel to The Trip, The Trip to Italy.  Although across the aisle from each other in separate pods, we looked at each other periodically in tears of laughter.  What’s amusing on earth is hysterical at 30,000 feet.  NB: Never watch The Notebook on a long haul, you’ll have a breakdown.

 

Looking toward Auntie Robyn's

Saturna Flyover

Arrival was 40 minutes early.  So while we were slated to touch down at 5:30 p.m. local time, we were in fact off the plane, through customs, with our luggage, and onto the NEX express train to Tokyo at 5:44 p.m.  How sweet is that?

The hotel we’re at for the first leg of this trip is The Strings by Intercontinental.  It sits on the top ten floors of a business skyscraper at a hub station called Shinagawa.  The lobby is on the 26^th floor.  In the 1970s Hyatt style, the centre is a huge atrium, with a glass bridge over a reflecting pool with a couple of restaurants, and glass elevators that slip up silently above the diners.  We were nicely welcomed and shown to our room—smallish but well designed and very comfortable—on the 30^th floor.  I would like to write that we unpacked and went out for a night on the town but, truthfully, we were both verging on zombie-ism, and took only a half hour stroll in the warm evening air, in and around the hotel, neither alert enough to be able to remember our footsteps.  Early night.

Land of the rising sun