Packed and cleaned our wonderful apartment on our last day in Tokyo. It was a great space, larger than we were expecting, very convenient to transit and in an “interesting” part of town. I felt differently about the ubiquitous massage parlors after reading Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice, but they added a local character we wouldn’t have seen unless staying among them. And it was reasonably priced, a rarity in this expensive city.
Cheap sashimi in ginza
John is heading back today, but we spent the morning together and headed toward the Tokyo train station as a group. Stuffed his pack into a locker and went in search of more sushi. We found a great place in Ginza, set up for office workers to get quick fresh fish. Not pretentious, but excellent and surprisingly cheap.
John also made sure we went to the famous Hidemi Sugino patisserie, whose eponymous chef was the first “oriental” to win the world cup of pastry and makes incredible mousse concoctions. With our bellies full of cheap fish and pricy pastries, we were off; John to one more afternoon in Tokyo, and us to the bullet train.
We picked up our one-week pass and made a bunch of reservations for our next legs. The day’s reserved seats to Kyoto were all sold, but we could still wait in line and get into the non-reserved cabin. With trains every 15 minutes, we didn’t have to wait long, and got to experience one more Japanese-style scrum.
Queue for the non-reserved seats
Picking up speed
We sat on the right to see Mt Fuji, but the clouds and the setting sun made that impossible. But with 7-days of unlimited train travel, we’ll try and make it back. The train is amazing, covering the 370km (230mi) between Tokyo and Kyoto in about 2:30, hitting up to 300kph (~185mph). Can’t wait until we get our act together and build these in California. It’s embarrassing it has taken us this long.
Leave a Reply