Japan, Day 7, Tokyo
Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 22, 2014
Did I mention that I’ve been fighting a sore throat since Hiroshima? I went to 7-11 and saw a little bottle similar to those 5 hour energy drinks that said Vitamin C, Lemon, 1000mg. I picked it up and drank it. It was like lemonade except not as sweet. Anyway, my sore throat is gone now. You see a lot of people here wearing surgical masks. That is because they aren’t feeling well and so to not disrespect others by passing along their sickness they wear surgical masks as a precautionary measure. They sell those masks everywhere.
Today I continued the trend and woke up around 3A and wrote blog for day 5. Around 6A I woke up Wolfgang, we ate our protein bars and packed our bags. We threw an extra set of clothes into our backpacks, since we would be once again shipping our bags to our next hotel and would need clothes until we received the bags. Our backpacks were getting heavy since we were starting to accumulate gifts. Also, there was the matter of the 5 large full beer cans still in the frig. Wolfgang had 4 Pepsi’s and so we packed them all in our packs and headed downstairs. Checkout was easy and we went to a separate counter to ship the bags. This took about ten minutes. Then we headed across the street to Shin Kyoto station to meet John at the bakery. We found a place to sit down since the packs were heavy and he showed up a few minutes past the assigned time. We boarded the Shinkansen around 925A headed toward Tokyo and arrived shortly after noon.
We were hungry so we walked across the street from Tokyo Station to an office tower and headed up to the 6th floor to the restaurant area, which is vaguely similar to a food court. On the way we passed a Hawaiian restaurant/bar. Apparently Hawaii is really popular here. The Japanese love to go there to vacation. I would think a vacation wouldn’t be going from one island to another but that’s just me. We were all in the mood for ramen so we found an excellent ramen restaurant overlooking Tokyo Station, which is this old brick building in the style of old. While everything around it is modern, it stays the same. Pretty cool. I had pork ramen, similar to the ramen I had in Kyoto but different in that the soup was created by boiling pork bones rather than soy-based, which created this incredibly wonderful full flavor.
We then took the Red (Maranouchi) Line to the Gray Line (Hibiya) ending up at Kamiyacho station. After a 5 minute walk up a hill we arrived at the Hotel Okura. We waited a few minutes to get our room ready since it was about 1340 (check-in starts at 2P). The female bellhop took our backpacks and placed them on a cart and showed us to our room. She spent 15 minutes explaining all the details (laundry, restrooms, how to get assistance, room service, etc). I told her that Friday we’d have two bags coming from Kyoto and she asked if we would be here in the room when they arrived. I told her “no” and she asked whether it was OK to go ahead and put them in our room when we were not here. I told her that was fine and then we thanked her and she went on her way. This was the best room of the trip. It was spacious, even by American standards. Most of the rooms were tiny. There was room for the bed and maybe one chair. This room had a lot of extra space, a king-sized bed, and the mattress and pillows were softer. I think Westerners probably like this place. Even the bathroom was much larger. After shedding ourselves of unneeded burdens, we took leave of our room. We didn’t take time to unpack because John was in the lobby.
Wolfgang thought he would be clever and snuck up behind John and tickled his neck. Not getting a reaction he asked John why he didn’t jump or turn around. John said that Japanese don’t touch like that so he knew it was us. Funny. We walked back down the hill and took the Gray Line about 2 stops to Ginza. This is the ritzy part of Tokyo with the finest stores from around the world. Kris wanted some stationary so we went to Itoya. Itoya is this amazing store that has pens, stationary, notebooks, tablets, etc. Kris had read they have this great paper there so I was on a mission. We picked up the paper and headed over to a shaved ice place across the street. This gave me a chance for a much needed rest. John bought three of these shaved ice treats (like snowcones) in strawberry flavor. Wow, so good.
Now originally Wolf had wanted to go to a monkey park a few hours north. At best it would take a full day, which in the end we didn’t have. As a compromise we found a sword exhibit in the paper that we all thought would be cool. We walked from the shaved ice place to the sword exhibit. We took off our shoes and walked in only to find it was primarily a store selling old artifacts. Still, we spent probably 20 minutes looking around. The oldest sword was about 800 years old, which is pretty incredible. I think they wanted around $50K USD for it. I am sure there are collectors that would love to have it.
We continued walking through Ginza. Swee-Chi had given John the address to a cigar shop so that I could find a good cigar. I knew what I wanted! We couldn’t find the store and so John asked a policeman for directions. He walked us there! The cops here don’t carry guns as they don’t need them. They are illegal. The only killings apparently are due to stabbings and generally that is between people who know each other. Stabbings are personal because you have to look at the person…anyway, this is not a political statement. The fact is that the cops here serve a different purpose and so I was grateful for the cigar assist. John and Wolf waited outside. The humidor was on the right as you entered, the counter on the left, and straight ahead was a lounge which had people smoking in it as to be expected. I entered the humidor and immediately found what I was looking for: Cohiba, and not the fake Cohibas you get in the states. I’m talking Habana baby. They didn’t have the infamous corona size so I settled on a robusto with a beautiful oily wrapper. Since you can’t bring them back, I only purchased the one, whichever as enough at 3500 yen. Oh, and the wooden matches? Yeah, another hundred yen. Now I just needed to find a place to smoke it.
My feet were killing me once again. John said it would be cheaper to take the subway but I really didn’t want to walk further. He hailed a cab, gave him the hotel name, and we parted ways with John, but not before making plans to meet on Friday for our trip to Kamikura. The cab ride cost us about 1300 yen. Money well spent. We got back to the hotel by about 5P. I fell asleep immediately and slept until 10P. John had suggested we take the subway to a couple of cool areas that night to get more sights worked into our time in Tokyo but neither Wolf nor myself had it in us. I think Wolf was taking care of the old man a bit here. When I woke up at 10P I asked him if he wanted to go have dinner but while I was sleeping he had been noshing on the nuts (the Costco supply) and drinking Pepsi. Don’t judge. He was good and so was I. I fell back asleep around 11P. My current inventory at the end of day 7 is one Cuban cigar and 4 beers, having drunk one at 10P.
Comments
Leave a Reply