Day 8 Tokyo to Kanazawa

 

Day 8 Tokyo to Kanazawa

It was a leisurely start to the day as we didn’t have to board the train till 12.45, so a final walk through the Ginza streets followed breakfast. It was a gloriously sunny day. Many shops already had lines of people waiting at the doors. Clearly these people were far more patient than us. No runners are worth an hour’s wait!

Checkout was a breeze and there was a taxi just outside the hotel door, so in no time we were at the massive railway station. The crowds were pretty incredible. Apparently it was “Sports Day” and some kind of holiday. We were quite early so rather than going inside and joining the melee, we found a couple of seats outside and enjoyed people watching. Finding the right platform was easy despite the plethora of railway lines and we took our place in the queue. When the Shinkansen arrived, a cleaner stood at the door with a plastic bag for disembarking passengers to drop in their rubbish. Of course he gave each passenger as little bow as they passed. The doors then locked and we were only let on board when the cleaning team finished their sweep through.

Minutes after we boarded, and exactly on time, the train pulled out. We expected that there would be a catering car or something similar on board, but it appeared that the service had been stopped, so for the next two and a half hours we had to do with the bottle of water and some of the nibblies we’d bought from Melbourne.

It was such a fast smooth ride and the journey would have been so pleasant were it not for three little kids sitting behind us. They were quite noisy on occasion and the father who sat next to us while his wife tried to wrangle the kids, did his best to ignore the whole thing. With about 40 minutes to go and after the screaming couldn’t be ignored any longer, he left his seat and sat with his wife to put the kids to sleep. Thank God!

Arriving in Kanazawa, we joined the taxi line and within about 10 minutes arrived at the hotel. Our room looked out on a string of high end shops from its 11 story vantage. In the distance we could see hills. Very pleasant.

By the time we dropped our bags in the room I was ravenous, so we went into a nearby department store that had a food hall in the basement. We got some takeaway and had it outside before setting off to explore the nearby streets. The main drag had many of the top end shops we had seen in Tokyo but the side streers were more humble and more interesting. We hoped to find somewhere we go to for dinner later. Our walk took us down to the river. We found a few places that looked interesting. As we returned with the sun now setting and the steet lights glowing, I thought we found a place I thought looked good, but it turned out that they had an hour’s wait for a table. Off we went again and on closer inspection, many of the places were drinking places with bar snacks. Johnny was keen to get some tempura, but try as we might, we were unsuccessful.

Eventually tired and footsore we opted for a beef BBQ place that looked pretty good. Yes, they did have room and with the help of Google Translate ordered two beers, some premium beef that we expected to BBQ on the contraption in front of us, a side order of prawns and some noodles. We waited and waited. Eventually we hailed a waiter and asked where our food was. Two small prawns arrived. A long time later, a plate of thin beef slices (seared with a hand held gas jet) arrived under two raw egg yolks. No noodles arrived. We had the meat and asked for the bill. It was a bit disappointing, but we will make a better choice of venue tomorrow night. The city seems to have a seafood focus so we should be able to do better than today.

On the way home, Family Mart came to the rescue with some nice desserts and canned coffee.

Day 7 Tokyo and fish market

 

Day 7 Tokyo and the fish market

Today was the best day in Tokyo so far. We walked from the Ginza district to Tsukiji and met Raiko, our guide, outside the Hongwan-Ji temple. It was a gloriously sunny day and we visited the temple before we set off on our food tour. The tour was listed as Fish Market, but most of the time we toured the general market. It was a brilliant opportunity to try a bit of everything…grapes, teriyaki chicken (where every single part of the chicken, minus the feet, are made into BBQ skewers), loads of spices and coated dried beans, a selection of seafood, tea and some wagyu skewers to die for. We saw wasabi in its plant form, before it's ground and made into a paste. We bought some coated coffee beans as snacks but resisted the packets of crispy grasshoppers. We saw the coffee shop that John Lennon (and presumably Yoko Ono) frequented. We even visited a couple of knife shops as some in our group wanted to but some as souvenirs for families. Raiko was fantastic, steering us to places that knew her and would not only treat us royally, but gave us discounts.

After the food tasting tour we visited the actual fish market, which was interesting. I wondered where they got prawns as thick as sticks of corn sticks and oysters as big as my palm. At the end of the tour we visited a local shrine, built to give thanks for the bounty of the sea that the market thrived on. Even though the area looked like any normal street, Raiko explained that the whole area was once underwater and now built on reclaimed land. The tour lasted about two and a half hours and was worth every minute of it. We headed back into the market for another Wagyu skewer. They were soooo simple and sooo delicious!

I had learnt my lesson about keeping hydrated and made sure to keep stocked up with sips of electrolyte drink. I felt so very much better today and it let me really enjoy the program. We thought it best to work out the travel arrangements for tomorrow so Johnny checked the documents and route before we headed to the station for a dry run. We eventually found the right machine and collected our train tickets. As they did not include allocated seating, we also found the ticket office and upgraded our tickets. On the weekend the shinkansen can get very crowded.

On the way home for a rest we again found our way back to that terrific coffee shop below a Ginza shopping centre and enjoyed an iced coffee and a rest. Then it was off to the Tenshodo model railway shop just off the Ginza main street. It was certainly interesting, but Johnny had been buying a lot of locos etc online recently so there was really nothing there to interest him.

Throughout the day we had been getting the most wonderful photos and reports from Britt’s adventures with Harri. We think a tourist could cheerfully spend two weeks in just Tokyo. It’s a great city.

We finished our first week in Tokyo with a nice meal at a restaurant not 20 steps from the hotel. The Ginza Tenkuni was a beautiful place just beyond the hotel bar. We ordered tender meals that included a mixture of vegetable and seafood tempura over a bed of rice. It was served with a very tasty bowl of miso soup and some pickles. We thought this was also a good opportunity to try some sake. Kampai! But in the end, I think a beer would have been more to my taste. Dessert was vanilla ice cream floating on a bed of coffee jelly. Johnny had a bracken dumpling with black honey. It was a delightful meal with attentive service. 

We can sleep in tomorrow as checkout will not be until 11.00. Then it will be a taxi to the station and off to Kanazawa, on the Kagayaki 533 shinkansen.

Day 6 Tokyo

 

Day 6 Tokyo gallery and sushi cooking class.

The day began well with a me feeling a lot better after a night’s sleep. I had a risk averse breakfast with just fruit and toast before we set off to the Tokyo Modern Gallery. The walk to the gallery was through the tree shaded and wide streets of this fabulous city, and it was just as well as the clouds had cleared and a determined sun was bearing down on us.

We had a pit stop at City Bakery coffee shop in the lower level of a shopping centre and it was the perfect spot. There was a vast array of gorgeous little cakes absolutely designed to tempt you as you wait for the coffee order, and we showed great restraint in just sharing an Earl Grey and chocolate chip muffin.

We left the cool (cool both in temperature and in the jazz playing) of the coffee shop to take the streets through the business district and down to the environs of the Imperial Palace. We took the path along the vast moat that surrounded the compond. It was quite a long walk and the heat made the walk quite hard. We remembered that Wil recently ran these streets in the Tokyo marathon and could only marvel at his fitness and determination. I have to say that by the time we reached the gallery, I felt quite depleted.

We lined up for tickets, but the woman behind the counter took one look at us and whipped out a prepared sign that said in English that elderly visitors over 65 entered free. Win! We were pleased to see that the gallery was about the “modern” history of Japanese art without going so far as some of the contemporary stuff that just seems to take the piss. Johnny declared that his favourite was a small piece of a vase with an apple perched on it. Strange boy with strange tastes was all I could think. It was an interesting gallery over four levels, but I found myself searching for a seat in each room. I think the long walk over had drained me.

There was a lovely city skyline view from a long picture window that sat across the upper level and even though the Imperial palace was immediately in front of us, the view was hidden by a lush band of trees.

After the gallery we thought it best to go back to the hotel for a rest as we had booked for a sushi cooking class in Asakusa and we wanted to be fresh for the journey over and the session, Johnny had no problem understanding and negotiating the metro and its multiple lines and we were soon in Asakusa district. The streets were busy but the students had gone home and so the atmosphere was less claustrophobic. Tokyo has everything except street seats and so when I found a stone plinth outside the cooking school I nabbed it while Johnny went off to find me a drink from a nearby supermarket. I was a bit worried as I felt as if I was fading fast.

The cooking school was up on the higher levels and there was already a Dutch couple there when we arrived. The class was taken by a fun and exciting young duo that were very supportive and helpful. We learnt how to make both nigiri and maki. Surprisingly, they looked great, held together and tasted wonderful. Feeling increasingly better as time passed we had a chance to get to know the other couple. They were a little younger than us and had met online during covid and been together for six years, even though they both kept their own homes, her in Amsterdam and he in the countryside.

It was a lovely warm evening and wishing to avoid any peak hour crush on the metro, we took a long walk down to the river and over two bridges. The Asakusa lights lit up the water and the Tokyo Skytree put on an everchanging lightshow. We had a quick call to Gin so that we could show Charlie the river lights. It was a lovely walk and the peace of the riverside walk was the perfect place for people to decompress after a day’s work,

The metro ride home was less crowded and we were soon back in the Ginza where the luxury shops were still open and people were still shopping. We went straight to bed as Friday we had booked for an early tour of the fish market.