Up at 0330 on Monday - I thought that I had given up that behaviour since I retired. Elly, Daniel and I headed out to the airport to embark on our Japan Adventure.
A pleasant enough flight to Tokyo/Narita via the Gold Coast ensued.
Our landlord for our apartment in Tokyo had advised us to take a "Limousine Bus" to one of the hotels then take a short taxi ride to the apartment, rather than taking the "Narita Express train to Tokyo station then a longer taxi ride from there.
Since the bus was going to take an hour and a half and cost nearly $100, we decided to check out the Narita Express, and with the help of a nice JAL flight attendant, we bought train tickets.
As it turns out the tickets were not much cheaper, but the Narita Express would only take 36 minutes, instead of 90 minutes, and we would have had to wait longer for the next bus anyway.
With all that done we headed down to the departure platform and waited for the 1848 train to arrive.
The train marked "For Tokyo" pulled into the station well before it's departure time of 1848, so we heaved our bags in and took our numbered seats. I settled in to wait for the departure time, when the doors suddenly closed and off we went!
"It's the wrong train" I shrieked, and I was correct.
We had managed to find ourselves on a standard stopping all stations train which subsequently took an hour and three quarters, instead of 36 minutes to transport us to Tokyo station! Good start!
ATMs don't work here! - or at least most of them, for international cards, which we found out after having arrived with a token number of Yen. Now we faced the real possibility of stranding ourselves a long way from the apartment with insufficient cash.
Don't worry, we worked it out, and found the apartment, which is really nice and spacious.
After settling in I realised that I couldn't find my bank access card, which I needed to get money from the non-existent ATMs. I searched everywhere in vain, thinking that I must have left it in the taxi as I was fishing around for paperwork in my pocket - bugger! I knew that if I rang and cancelled the card, they would cancel Elly's as well, and we would never be able to get any cash.
As I was lying in bed about to nod off, I had a brilliant idea; maybe it dropped on the road as we left the taxi. I leapt out of bed, threw on my clothes and scampered outside. Amazingly there, on the road was my card!
December 17
This morning we began our orientation, finding out how to make our way around and get to the places we wanted to go.
But first we had to find a Citibank, which, we had been advised, was the only bank which had international ATMs, along with Post Offices and 7Elevens, if you can find them.
We found Citibank. Hooray. We are now solvent; at least until our maxed out Amex bill hits the letterbox, and we have only just started!
Daniel has taken over as chief navigator, and is doing a great job relieving the pressure from me. We worked out how to get day tickets on the Tokyo Metro, which is a really extensive system, you can get to anywhere from anywhere.
We walked through the Hama-rikyu Gardens, which are just beautiful, with typical Japanese manicured trees, and extensive lakes and tea houses, with the city buildings just adjacent. This used to be a walled section of Tokyo, which was in the era of the shoguns and onwards up until immediate post war to entertain the dignitaries in the tea rooms on the lake.
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| Hama-ryku Garden |
From there we took a river cruise to get a more extensive view of the city followed by a walk to Senso-ji temple, which is a large multi temple area, completely rebuilt after being burnt down once or twice in its lifetime.
Daniel and I have noticed that a very large number of historical buildings have been destroyed by fire over the years. That's what happens when you use mostly wood to build things. There was also a market like atmosphere, with scores of stalls selling a multitude of items and food.
We popped into the National Science Museum, and, guess what they have out the front - a full size model of a whale! Bit much!
On the way home we had a look at the Ginza, but happily didn't do any shopping, just had a beer,
then headed back to Roppongi where we are staying, and visited a Lonely Planet recommended local restaurant, which was quite special; lots of noise as the two chefs were yelling in synch, repeats of the orders yelled out by the circling waiter. The customers all sat at a U shaped bench surrounding a section in front of the chefs, which was full of all the fresh ingredients. When an order was placed, they would lean across and collect the fish or whatever they needed, and then sit back and place it on the fire, all this as they yelled unintelligible (for us) chants together. How it all worked I have no idea, but everyone seemed to get what they ordered. When the chefs had a dish ready, they would lean forward with the dish sitting on the end of what looked like a pizza paddle used for sliding pizzas in and out of the oven. I even had some Sashimi to show how versatile I am.
After dinner I asked Elly whether it was expensive - she said "yes". We have fallen back into our "Norway" mode, where Elly pays all the bills and I don't get to see them or worry about them.
Nice weather, around 12 degrees, but some rain coming, apparently.
Wednesday the 18th December.
Last night I was a little out of the loop, as Elly and Dan plotted our activities for today, due to the fact that I was trying to write the blog and stay awake at the same time. All I knew was that we were heading to Nikko, a small village about 2 hours by limited express train, which has several shrines and pagodas in close proximity.
Elly was doing her usual Sargent Major trick in the morning, herding us out of the apartment without even a coffee!
Navigator Dan was then in top form, sorting out how we were to find our train. We finally did find ourselves at the correct station, but it was all very confusing. We were lucky to find a really helpful staff lady who spoke good English, and sorted it out for us. Limited express train for 100 mins, then change trains for another 10 minutes, then bus 2C and get off at stop 82! Easy! She took us to her office, filled out all the forms, special package, including all trains and bus, then adding extra for the limited express train, giving us a 20% discount for the express train because we were adding it to the package. I knew that!
Rice crackers and coffee on the train kept us going until Nikko. Friend Sue White had sung the praises of this trip, and rightly so. We did note the small cemeteries for each village as she mentioned, and it was good to see some high ground appearing as we approached Nikko, with signs of snow. We are going skiing next week and have been concerned about lack of snow. This was a different area of course, but it was good to see some white mountains.
From Nikko station we took the bus to the first shrine, Rinno-ji Temple, which was actually a large recent building with a picture of the temple on its facade. It turns out that the whole thing is being renovated (read rebuilt). They have organised it pretty we'll though, such that you can wind your way through around the blocked off sections and still see a lot of what was in the temple. Not quite the same atmosphere though. This is a massive exercise which must be costing a fortune!
I won't bore you with details of individual temples, other than to say that they are all magnificent, and vary in age, some having been initially constructed in the 700s AD and others in the 17th century. Needless to say, many, as mentioned previously, have been in the "Rebuilt because they had burned down" category.
These temples were all set among magnificent cedar trees, some of which are hundreds of years old.
As we walked amongst the trees and temples and pagodas, it began to snow lightly, gradually becoming heavier. It was so beautiful and peaceful and quiet, and there were almost no people other than us. I am sure in summer it would be a different story.
We returned to Tokyo to find it raining, so ducked in to the first restaurant we saw, and had a very nice, inexpensive meal and a beer, which, Elly has just informed me was about one tenth the price of last night's meal. That is scary considering, as I have previously mentioned, I am not supposed to know about how much things are costing.
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