Much happier children at the start of day two after 12 hours of unconsciousness! I didn’t manage quite that much, but could still feel the improvement.
Breakfast was an experience. I could tell that Danny had the fear after our excitement at lunch yesterday so relief was written all over his face when he found the bacon! Miso soup and extensive salad and dressings were also available. In the spirit of trying new things, Danny went for seaweed seasoned potatoes, I tried a pickled plum (don’t…) and Keith had fried chicken.
By 9am we were sun creamed and ready to meet our guide for the day. Chika San proved infinitely patient with our touristy delight in butterflies, cicadas that sound like car alarms and enormous Koi carp. She taught us how to use the underground, sorted our bullet train tickets for the rest of the trip and introduced us to Japanese beauracracy. The lovely people at Audley who sent us all our information had bought Amelia a full price Pasmo (equivalent of Oyster) card and she wanted to change it to save us 50% on each fare. The second office we tried in the underground station found us some paperwork to complete. The poor young man did NOT like the fact that there were not enough boxes for an international phone number, nor could he work out which part of Mila’s name was her surname. We filled in another form to make him feel better and then managed to leave with our mission complete.
Travel in Tokyo is not as scary as it first appears. All the lines are coloured and have a letter and each stop is numbered. The only slight complication is that each station has different exits which are given a letter and number. Thank God for Chika.
Chika took us to the original site of the Imperial Palace. We learned that it had been almost completely destroyed in WW2 by air raids and only one watch tower is still standing. The gardens were beautiful but very, very hot. Our lovely rep from Audley had emailed us to advise rehydration drinks and after some initial resistance (flavour related) from the children we all felt better for the aptly named Pocari Sweat!
The next stop on was a boat tour via an unmanned monorail (all fine but it felt like the beginning of a superhero film… there is always a derailed monorail in those!). We went all native and bought Bento boxes to eat as we cruised up the river. Danny was significantly braver with less jetlag and even tried the weird, sweet bean paste thing that I thought was chestnuts.
We were all wilting from the heat in the middle of the day so lovely Chika decided against another park and took us to see the Sensoji temple. She showed us how to purify our bodies (water) and minds (incense) before going in. We paid for the children’s fortunes to be read (another wonderfully interaction free transaction based on number) and then went to get our stamp. Apparently Buddism has a lot in common with Pokemon as Buddists collect stamps from each temple they go to. Our guide had a beautiful memento book with a stamp and calligraphy for each one. Sadly they only bother with the hand written effect if you have the book to put it in, so we had to buy a printed one instead for Mila’s memory book. Tomorrow we will start taking it with us! All Japanese tourist locations seem to have stamps to collect and Mila is very into it. More of that to follow I am sure.
Chika showed us the Shinto shrine near the temple and taught us how to tell the difference between the two- rope vs incense basically- so we didn’t embarrass ourselves or offend anyone. Then she took us to a traditional tea house where the menu is in picture form and in the window as you go in. We tried cold green tea (meh), two desserts where you pour syrup over crushed ice (strawberry: yes, matcha and sweet red bean paste: no) and a third; fruit salad and ice cream with more red bean paste (tastes like chestnuts so I liked it) and a green cream soda! Another culinary adventure but as we were all sitting down in air conditioning we were prepared to try anything!
Chika then took us back to the underground, pointed us in the right direction and waved us off. A lovely lady and a fantastic guide.
Our evening excursion (we are not done yet!) was to go to the 35th floor of the Tokyo Skytree building (2nd tallest building in the world but the first if you count the television antenna!). We had time before our scheduled ascension so we gave in to the pester power and took the children to the aquarium. It was exactly what you would expect- Japanese ascetism in every tank. I thought they had gone too far with genetic experimentation but it turned out it was just a large eel underneath a sting ray!
More queuing led us up another 35 floors to some more amazing views. It was very hazy today so visibility wasn’t great, certainly no chance of seeing Mount Fuji today although foothills were in view yesterday. Danny wasn’t keen on the glass elevator up to the 45th floor or the glass panels in the floor on the way back down but he lived to tell the tale.
By the time we had come back down in the super fast elevator (90 seconds to travel 30 floors), been to the Pokemon centre and grabbed some food it was dark so hotel and bed seemed a good idea. Our journey was made more entertaining by the tiny girl swinging between her parents’ hands whose shoes squeaked with every step. Children are few and far between in Tokyo: the low birth rate here was just a dry fact before we came but you soon realise that babies and pregnancies are uncommon.
Navigating ourselves back across Tokyo in the dark went off without a hitch, roll on tomorrow!