Sorry I’m late posting this, I know you’ll all be wondering what on earth’s happened this time? But no…it’s just that yesterday was a really busy day and we got back in too late for me to contemplate writing!
So let me tell you what we were busy doing. Well I woke up at about 2-37am again but this time literally could not get back to sleep. Jane was very similar so this didn’t really bode well for the busy day we had planned, especially as today we were on our own without a guide!
It had been raining really heavily all night and continued to do this for most of the day. There’s been another typhoon passing by Japan (No 31 this year) so this was the side effect of that. Anyway, after breakfast we set off catching the Yamanote Line (like London’s Circle Line) heading for Nippori. We spent the morning exploring Yanaka which is supposed to be ‘old’ Tokyo. We spent rather to much time in the huge cemetery here looking at the tomb stones some of which were enormous. The main difference to what we’d see back home is that the graves have these long wooden batons by them inscripted with messages and prayers. Our target was to find the tomb of Yoshinobu Tokugawa who is known as the Last Shogun and who died in 1913. It took some finding. The only other interesting fact about him that I have is that he had 1 wife and 2 concubines and 27 children plus one adopted child. He was obviously rather too busy to bother with being a samurai.
Still raining and we found a lovely peaceful temple inside the cemetery. Only tiny, it was such a contrast to where we’d been yesterday. It was really rather lovely and a little oasis of calm with its statue of Buddha, stepping stones and pools of water rippling in the rain.
By now we’d stayed here too long and mucked up our plan for the day even though it was only 9-45. We had a decision to make and the gardens we’d planned to visit lost out to wandering the streets old Yanaka! But first stop was The Renoir Coffee house. It was wonderfully old fashioned and had opened in the 1950s when Yanaka was in its prime. The chairs were plush velvet and the staff were quietly spoken and ever so polite. Feeling refreshed we went on our wander and discovered that when they say Yanaka is the ‘old Tokyo’ they do mean the 1950s rather than anything really ancient. There were some nice shops just starting to open up. Obviously my favourite are the many stationary shops. The paper products they sell are absolutely beautiful but I’m already spending too much on collecting temple stamps, so need to reign myself in! I don’t think the rest of the gang were very impressed with old Yanaka so it was soon time to move onto the future!
We caught the train back to Shibuya Station ready for our booking at Shibuya Sky. Basically this is another crazy tall building but this one’s selling point is its open rooftop terrance which allows you to more or less hang over the world famous Shibuya Scramble Crossing point. That’s the one with the 5 pedestrian crossings where the lights all go green for 1000-2000 pedestrians to cross at the same time!
Sadly today, due to the inclement weather the rooftop was closed but we still got to go up to the 14th and then 47th floors to check out the views and take our pics behind glass. And although up on the 47th floor the cloud kept blowing in and out of the views, I have to say I LOVED it, watching all the little ants running across the roads! Especially as I’d discovered time lapse on my phones camera! We were also lucky in that Christmas has arrived early in Tokyo and they’d decorated the halls with loads of silver inflatables, as tradition demands.
Once again, we’d rather over stayed our welcome here and I’d started to feel rather ill and not at all ‘indefatigable’ (Amanda) -with a mix up of jet lag and sore tummy. This brought on a side effect of severe grumpiness which is not nice for anyone. We made our way down and decided that we needed to visit Starbucks Olive lounge for a cheese and ham sarnie. Perfect and this got me back up and running again. It was now time for us to experience using the crossing ourselves. It is total mayhem with hundreds of people running about, Lorry’s that play music, Mario Karts whizzing around, and billboards of every description high above including the 3D dogs and cats which appear to be leaping out at you! Feeling rather better we now decided that we needed to visit the Hard Rock Cafe so that Jane could collect her shot glass. I’m sorry to say that at the moment I am feeling v unsure by Japanese food. I’d fully intended to embrace it – inspired by Jane MacDonald when she came here- but I just don’t feel like it at the moment!
So Nachos and ribs and a glass of white wine, it was at the Hard Rock in Roppongi Hills! We got chatting to the local Japanese people on the next table who were fascinated by our itinerary. One of them told us about how he’d played golf at St Andrew’s …was he a famous golfer?? As we sat there, I looked at my phone and could see on Insta people talking about the lights that had been turned on in Roppongi for Xmas! It was only a short walk from where we were so now feeling much better we headed off there. This upmarket shopping street, all Louis Vuitton and Gucci Wucci looked very pretty with a fabulous view down to the illuminated Tokyo Tower. It was very busy and they’d employed 5 security people to stop the traffic and allow people to cross the roads and take their pics! Crazy.
After all of this unexpected late night entertainment we headed back to Shibuya to check out the billboard situation in the dark. Very similar to in the light so it was time to head home and get dressed up in our hotel night gowns ready for bed. We look like Wee Willy Winkies in these so I took a sleeping pill determined to get some sleep tonight and headed of to 😴😴💤💤💤💤💤💤
PS actually negotiating our way around ourselves went really well and the trains especially the Yamanote Line are a great way to get to all the key places.
