The trip to Tokyo via Kuala Lumpur was uneventful, which is a bit of a win when you are traveling Malaysia Airlines. We arrived 7:00am Friday morning and after amusing the Customs guy hugely with our lack of actual travel plans. We bought a Tokyo subway pass (thanks Anne) and headed in to Shibuya for simple nostalgia (it was where we lived before) and left our luggage at a luggage place. All lockers were closed as Obama and others are on their way. Lots of terrorism signs everywhere, even at the airport where we were expressly prohibited from bringing in 'terrorism related materials'. Good to know.
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| Bloody kids with their heads always in their devices |
Wandered around Shibuya a little and stopped for a little cup of coffee and a cheesecake each and $40 later we were back on the train to wander around near Meiji Shrine including a visit to Kiddyland. Began to run out of steam and so we headed back to get our luggage then another train to Shinjuku and subway to near out Air B and B.
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| Near Meiji Shrine |
In Tokyo giving someone your address is an amusing way to tell them you really don't want to see them. If there is a rationality behind the system then it eludes me. After a couple of seemingly helpful steers from the locals we asked a guy in the garage under a building for directions. He looked at us as if we were nuts as, of course, it was that very building that we were looking for. I should tell you now that our directions consisted of a series of grainy b&w pictures of all the turns we were supposed to make, none of which seemed to match the actual geography, as well as the front of the building we were now behind. All good though and so we arrived at our first accommodation. By then my mother had been traveling for over 36 hours straight including 18 hours of plane flights and then innumerable flights of stairs in the labyrinthine Tokyo rail system that occupies story after story underground. So she had a sit down while I explored a little.
The wide main avenues of Tokyo and its vehicular efficiency and order belie a web of tiny back streets that seem unchanged from, well, who would know? One car wide, if that, with no footpath, ever, and, just like home, all the Mum's are zooming around with their kids in seats in the back, but here the kids are on the back of their bikes, not SUVs, and sometimes in the front as well.
I returned to base and the revived Rosemary (should I simply name her 'the Trooper' from hereon in?) and I set out for a feed. Settled on a tiny little hole in the wall place out of all the other tiny little hole in the wall places, had a nice feed and a beer and then headed back to our accommodation.
For me there is something magical about this side of Tokyo. I was in heaven. The atmosphere is delightful and it is perhaps enough to make the incredibly cramped living conditions bearable. No Westfields in sight. Just little stores where people come to buy their veges, fish or meat or whatever for that night and the shop keepers keep up a constant sing song selling their wares (yep, wares is really the right word here). Biking down to the shops ( now we're up to Mum, kid front and back and a load of shopping and not a helmet in sight) or station is all so quiet and peaceful compared to our city streets that house a fraction of the population. Ahhhh. It's so easy to be romantic about a place
you don't have to live in but my feelings of contentment there are real.
After dinner it was back to our bunks (actual bunks) and to sleep. Knackered.
From what I understand, the address system in Tokyo goes like this: Area are broken down into Chome and then blocks. Houses on a block were numbered sequentially in the order they were built. That's right. So technically you could have number 20 on one side and number 21 a 100 or so meters away on the other side.
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