Day 20 – wrapup in Tokyo

Met Tsuyen in the lobby today, getting ready to take his new group out to Nara, on the outskirts of Kyoto. There are only 6 in his new group which will be much easier for him after us 14! He said he enjoyed our group but that they were really fast!! I agree! I met one of the riders in the lounge – they are Aussies, mostly looking in their late 50’s or early 60’s. Cheerful looking bunch.

Took a taxi to the station and was interested to see that it cost me 1800 Yen going back, in less traffic, when it cost 1500 Yen coming, taking longer because of heavier traffic but I was with a native speaker. Tourist surcharge? I paid with a smile, as there was no way to converse about it anyway, and it’s still cheap by Canadian standards (~ $18).

Bullet train to Tokyo at 10, chatted at the station with a research scientist from Indiana (origin Germany, worked there x 10 years) doing an add-on few days to his conference in Tokyo. Sounds like he gets around quite a bit for conferences – he’s an AI guy and was pretty impressed with how advanced Japan is in this… said the tour of the business they got was like being in candyland. 3D screens, and lots of bells and whistles, and way ahead of the US in their tech.

Uneventful train trip except that I got a throat tickle and had to spend part of it in the intercarriage area coughing as the water didn’t do it. Finally found the throat lozenges which did the trick. Read an interesting article on the train about earthquake preparation by the railway companies – they have their own seismographs which predict the extent of damage and automatically put on the emergency brakes of the bullet trains as needed. Tracks are constructed with the latest seismic protection, especially after the 2011 earthquake that shut down the system. Amazingly, because of the automatic braking, nobody was hurt or killed on a train during that major earthquake. Impressive. I was also interested to see quite a few solar panel installations both on roofs and on the ground en masse, as we whizzed through the countryside. Train was completely full.

Off loaded at Tokyo Station, amazingly found the right exit and had a 2 min walk across station square to the hotel, which is quite swish. I was able to get into the room at 12:30 which was surprising but excellent as I got to dump the luggage and head out. The hotel has a direct entrance into the underground passage to Tokyo Station, I found, which will be useful tomorrow. It also has an unusual configuration, with the main entrance on the ground floor but the reception is on the 7th floor, which took me awhile to figure out! Nice view of Tokyo Station from the elevator to the 7th floor…

Headed out to look at some pastries – this is the business section of town and has a lot of high end stores, chocolateries and a few patisseries. Research!

Then over to Imperial Palace grounds, which I had seen last year but it was stinking hot then and we didn’t (couldn’t) wander around too much. Nice welcoming sign on the grounds…

Love the juxtaposition of the old and new. No tours of the imperial palace today, tomorrow or the day after.

It’s disappointing that there are no decent gardens around the Imperial Palace – the trees are nice, and there are no blades of grass out of place but no lovely gardens like there are around temples. The moat should be filled with water lillies!

The meeting of the old castle and the business district is clearly a place to take wedding photos! I saw three couples, with modern dresses and not kimonos, lining up to get pictures taken. The most amusing thing was seeing the brides crossing the busy intersection attempting to keep the white skirts of their dresses, up and clean while still maintaining their ruffles 😊!

It turns out that the underground passages connect from the hotel/Tokyo station to the intersection directly across from the palace grounds – you can be spit out directly across from the trees shown above. Handy! After dropping the research material off in the room fridge it was off to do errands – first, back into Tokyo Station, a vast metropolis, in search of a lunch/dinner of vegan ramen. There were two options, one of which I had to get a metro ticket for as it was inside the fare zone. I’d been there before and their ramen was excellent, and I sort of knew where it was, but bravely elected to try and find “Tokyo Ramen street” where there was another recommended vegan option. It was fully on the other side of the station – reasonably well signposted, though bewildering in the number of shops, zones and underpasses I passed through to get there… you have to buy a meal ticket before going in, from the machine outside which had little English i.e. essentially prepay and that was confusing but fortunately it was quiet and a restaurant worker walked me through it. Excellent gyoza and danden ramen; quite spicy but very tasty. Not quite as good as the Kyoto place though, just a hair cheaper…

After that it was off to try and locate a state liquor store inside the station that I had discerned from my ramen instructor would carry yuzu sake. That took quite a while, no info people to ask and the AI feature to the information board was useless. (So was my translator – it kept changing “yuzu sake” to “music”). Two asks at stores of clerks eventually yielded the info that I had to buy a ticket to get into the fare paid zone to access it…. argggh. 150 yen later, and another ask, I finally found it. Yahoo! Of course, the ticket wouldn’t work getting me out of the station but I’d expected that from last year and selected an exit with a manned booth, and I was let through when I explained what I’d done. I think last year we just leapt over the turnstile…. silly system.

Finally another interaction with a ticket machine buying my express rail ticket for tomorrow – very confusing, I don’t have a good record with these machines. Happily not too busy so one of the staff members came over and assisted. It took the Exodus group a LONG time to get through the process in Kyoto even with the leaders helping out…I’ll leave lots of time to find the zone that the airport express leaves from – didn’t seem well marked as I only saw it listed once in my three trips through the station. A detour to Family Mart to get yoghurt and fruit for breakfast, and back via the underground shortcut which is now easy to find.

Although a soak in the bath looked very inviting I opted for a reviving cup of matcha tea and headed out to investigate the downtown lights. I’d seen some signs of Xmas decorations in my first walk which was interesting – Tsuyen and Manu were saying that Christmas isn’t much of a thing here, and that most people would work Christmas Day. The vast majority are Buddhists, but it looks like in the big city the western influence is stronger, and they are well into their decorations for Xmas with trees up in the hotel restaurant and lovely light displays and street parks already.

the lights went on for a long way!

I walked by one shopping complex and there was music coming from it so went in to investigate – big crowd watching what looked liked a kids’ theme/Disney type area in action with lights and moving pieces.

No idea what it was – there is also a Harry Potter store in Tokyo Station, they do like their cartoon/fictional characters!

Very pretty overall though, and so was Tokyo Station at night.

from the elevator

At last I got my soak in the tub, bath salts provided here! (it was herbal patches yesterday) and there is another couple of inches to the length of the tub in this hotel. I am judging the hotels by the size of their tubs – most you can’t even sit in, or there aren’t any, but there are no points deducted if there is an onsen in the hotel.

Last pack done, checked in for the flight tomorrow – this holiday is almost over!

Highlight – the colours in the mountains, and the Shirakawa-go stay. But lots of others, including the fun Kyoto tour, and the cool cycles through small villages with old houses, narrow alleys in canal areas in Kanazawa and other towns. Ranrouken gardens….

Total mileage; 484.5 km. total elevation gain; 2979.1 m Less than expected – my recordings of many of the days were shorter and less elevation gain than the Brits’. Not sure why. I think Moira did that entire elevation in one day of cycling LOL but it was a good mix of cycling and touristing along a very neat route.