Sentimental Journey

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Tonight we had an appointment to visit another old friend at the Park Hotel Tokyo, so working backwards from that: meeting at 4.30, an hour to get there (and a half?); an hour at least to lie down at home, two hours to get from Kamakura back home... we should leave Kamakura at around 11 to have some wiggle room. Breakfast (Japanese style again) is at 8, but we had to negotiate a whole fish (a mackerel?) with chopsticks, so it took a bit longer than a bowl of cornflakes would've. Then Stephen's taping of his blisters meant that we left the hotel at 9.30. We had a bit of mucking around to get coins to use a coin locker at the station, but then we had plenty of time for a nice unencumbered walk.

We still wanted to try again for the shop of miniatures. The street we were on yesterday just didn't feel right, and although the location where the shop would have been was completely shuttered with a big roll-a-door, the building didn't seem right anyway. So we both agreed that it was worth checking the neighbourhood a little bit more. Unfortunately, there were no more little streets on that orientation, and it wasn't on the main street, so we just had to give up. I wonder if the shop was near a different temple or shrine, but now we didn't have time to re-explore that much, so we just took a back street back down towards the station.

In these back streets now you could definitely see this town's history of trying to confuse attackers. Vietnam had a similar way of thinking in wartime - all the little back alleys serve to confuse the enemy but are very useful escape routes for those in the know. Here, the streets are footpaths. I'll include a photo of an intersection we came across: it was a five-way crossing, but all the streets are the same width, and yet there is a car parked in someone's yard! How could they possibly drive it home??

We have noticed that even in the city, any spare land used to be made into a rice paddy, but now it's a car park ($15US for overnight parking - presumably a little less for a a permanent spot by monthly payment); or especially in the case of railway land, between tracks some companies have put arrays of solar panels.

On the route back towards the station, our map had marked a few shrines and historic spots that weren't part of the main tourist information, they were just on the map because they exist, so we popped in to those merely because they were on the way, but they were tiny, and not particularly interesting, and barely even worth a photo, let alone a whole paragraph in a blog.

When it got to 10.30, we were nearly at the station but the timing was perfect because on Day 1 Stephen had noticed a cafe near here with pizza toast in its window - real pizza toast, the kind that is on bread an inch and a half thick. We used to see this in every cafe window, but it seems to have gone out of fashion in favour of New York cheesecake. 35 years ago there weren't that many pizza restaurants, and pizza toast seemed to be a cute response to globalisation, but now the real globalisation has knocked the half-hearted attempts out the window. So we went for a coffee with pizza toast.

Another globalisation observation is that the foreigners now are far more diverse than in the past. It used to be that all foreigners were assumed to be American, and there were very few non-Caucasian non-Japanese around. Now there are loads of South Asians, Arabian-looking types (Akihabara the other night had a lot of Turkish kebab restaurants, and several Indian restaurants), and even the Summer Festival in the park here last weekend had a kebab stall with a Turkish vendor) and lots of South American-looking women, especially.

Anyway, we got the train at maybe 11.10, but it wasn't the exact train we wanted. Rather than wait another 20 minutes, though, it was better to catch this one then transfer further down the line. When we got to the transfer point I looked at the map and we decided to get a taxi to the correct station rather than wait for another train, because it was only a kilometre or so away.Then we were on track for a nice quick ride home, with only one easy transfer. And with the bags, we decided to taxi from the station too. We bought lunch at the station, got home about 1.30, gobbled lunch in order to get some rest before going out, emailed the hotel to say that 4.30 would be too difficult and we wouldn't be there till 5, then collapsed. Ah, so good to get back to your own familiar floor. And a quiet pillow! The ones at the hotel, being traditional, were filled with barley or wheat or something quite noisy. Not uncomfortable: they moulded to your face, as long as you shook out the pillowcase to make them less densely packed. But they were noisy when they moved against each other in the pillow.

We aimed to get away at 3.30 but we didn't really sleep well, so we were up early and got away at 3.20. Google gave us a route to the hotel that didn't include the awkward transfer that made us late last time, but when we got to the station we were expecting to walk 600m from, it didn't tell us which exit to use. That makes a big difference, and at first we were wandering round the station looking for any exit in the correct direction, then when we found one we couldn't tell where to go even when we got outside, and by now it was 5 o'clock, so we gave up and took a taxi. 10 past 5 and we finally met my old friend, Mr Hayashi.

Although the emails had referred to him as GM, and Mr Sato in our first visit had called him the General Manager, it hadn't quite registered with me. But now my friend was 60, heavy and full of gravitas, and oh my goodness, he was the General Manager of this hotel! He used to be on the Front Desk, then in 1997 he was one of the Food and Beverage managers. He now looked a lot like the GM of Shiba Park when I worked there. Another old friend, now the Night Manager, came over to say hello too. I remembered his face, but I had put the wrong name with it. He had been a real sweetie, and he still looked very nice and a little shy. We chatted until 6, when we all had somewhere else to be.

Three more trains, only 3 or 4 stops each, but with transfers without incident, to go to a place new to me (Kinshicho) for another new experience. Ebi told us in Kamakura that he played drums with a jazz band at a hotel in Tokyo every Friday night, so we wanted to go and see that. He started at 6, and we got there at 6.45, when the band was having a break. Ebi was surprised but he seemed happy to see us, and we stayed for the whole show, which finished a bit after 8.30. It was very light jazz, just background music for the lobby, really, but there was an appreciative fan there, and the singer was good. it was a pleasant evening. Sadly, Ebi couldn't join us after the show.

I remembered another thing I wanted to do while we were in Japan, and that was to visit an Izakaya. This is a kind of Japanese tapas bar, I guess: a place for drinking but the snacks become the meal. A girl at the hotel recommended a place nearby, so we went there for our dinner. We ordered 6 or 7 plates of stuff - mostly chicken, but they did some inventive stuff with cheese and bacon too.

It was close to 10 when we left, and after 11 when we got home. Now we saw plenty of people leaving the local station, as if 11pm is this area's rush hour. Oh, and 6pm on a Friday is definitely quite a busy time to travel on Tokyo's train system. No men in white gloves pushing us on, but instead there were passengers who tried to get on, but then decided, no, I'd rather wait 2 minutes for the next train. My worry was, what if I'm forced off, to let people behind get off, and then can't get on again before the doors close? We didn't have a Plan B for that situation, but luckily we didn't need it.

Anyway, as you can see, we got home late and I wasn't prepared to do the blog last night, so here it is this morning instead. Sorry 😊

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Photos

Pizza Toast
and an eclair

Jazz Band, The Blues Train
Ebi is playing the drums, almost invisibly .