Day 1 - Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - Melbourne to Tokyo
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Melbourne to Tokyo
ET is staying to look after Wally while we’re away, so she came over about 7 pm and we headed out to dinner. As she’s working nights this week, she then headed off to work. It would have been better if she was on her regular schedule so that she was here when we left but Wally will just have to manage on his own for the night. He got up on the table earlier and was sniffing around the various bits and pieces (plugs, cords, paperwork etc.) that we were assembling so I suspect he knows something is going on. When we came back from dinner, he was still asleep on his chair in the office and we hoped he would stay there but no such luck. He sat looking at us and when it came time to leave, despite our best efforts to sneak out, he followed us to the door, miaowing as he went.
We were at the airport in good time, checked the bags and headed to the lounge. Whereas we’ve traveled with just carry-on on recent trips, we seem to be taking rather more ‘stuff’ this time. After an interlude in the lounge, we headed to the gate shortly before boarding started. Although we no longer have our elevated ‘first class lounge’ status, at least we still seem to qualify for priority boarding so were able to board before the masses.
The flight is full. We left on time and, as is always the case, despite our 12.05 am departure time, they feel bound to feed us. At least they have the common sense to limit it to the drinks trolley and a bag containing a packet of crisps (to supplement the rice crackers that came with the gin and tonic), a donut-like thing, a Tim Tam (doubt we’ll get that coming the other way) and a bottle of water. We managed to get some sleep though economy seats are not exactly conducive to that end. The leg room isn’t too bad - not exactly generous but at least your knees aren’t crammed into the seat in front of you. I was awake about 6 am so took the opportunity to head to the bathroom to change back out of my flight pajamas. The bathroom I’d used earlier to change when we boarded was occupied so I used the one opposite, which turned out to be rather more spacious. Not only that, it had a Japanese toilet! I knew there was a reason to fly Japan Airlines....
As I write this, breakfast has arrived. I opted for the frittata (wrong choice) whereas A-M had the teriyaki chicken and noodles. The noodles looked a bit stodgy but the piece of teriyaki chicken I sampled was nice enough.
All in all, a pleasant enough flight with typically polite Japanese service. No regrets at eschewing Qantas in favour of Japan Airlines.
We arrived a little ahead of our scheduled 9.05 am arrival time so a good start .... though it went a bit downhill on occasion after that. We pulled into gate 88 at the satellite terminal, which meant a relatively short taxi to get to the gate but a long walk (mostly on travelators though) to get over to the main terminal and eventually to immigration. No great lines fortunately but never helped by the idiots in front of you who haven’t filled in their forms - either properly or at all. By the time we got to baggage claim and made it over to carousel 5, the bags were already going round so a quick dash to grab them before they disappeared for another go-round. A brief stop with the customs guy and out into the terminal.
Next task was to head upstairs to level 3 departures (from level 1 arrivals) to go to the post office to pick up the mobile wifi unit we rented. I’m sure the terminal map I looked at had an escalator at the south end of the concourse so turn right when you get out of customs. However, the escalator was nowhere to be seen so we trailed down the other way and finally found some escalators to get us up to the departures level. At least the post office was where the map said it was - down at the south end of the terminal, opposite the A-B-C check-in desks. We retrieved the parcel with the rented mobile wifi unit without any problem and then headed back in the direction we’d come to get the elevator this time back down to level B1F (one floor below arrivals) to get the train.
I had bought the train tickets online but you have to go and collect them (based on a reference number). It was immediately apparent that there was a Keisei Railway Information Centre (which you went into) with a line of a dozen or so people waiting...... but also, off to the right about 30 yards away and ‘open’ to the lobby area, a Keisei ticket office. Having already got in line at the information centre, we followed the usual ‘divide and conquer’ approach, so I went over to the ticket office, leaving A-M in line .... or so I thought. As there was nobody in line at the ticket office, A-M saw me in conversation with the lady behind the counter and, to my chagrin, started to head over. Chagrin, because the lady had just told me I needed to go to the information centre. Quite why this distinction existed between the ticket office and the information centre I have no idea. Needless to say, when we returned to the information centre, the queue had now grown by about 3 people. No matter. The line inched slowly forward, with each person taking an age to figure out what it was they wanted to do and the inevitable group of three unable to simply buy three tickets and sort it out later rather than each buy their own, one by one. Eventually, we get there, show the lady the reference number and my passport, agree that the 10.02 is the next train and get the tickets (plus the voucher we need to exchange at Keisei-Ueno station for tickets on whatever train we want to come back to the airport).
As I was wearing a sweater, I was by now decidedly hot, sweaty and generally grumpy. It was still only 9.45 so no rush for the train. Off to the bathroom to change and put on a shirt and then down to the platform to wait for the train. We find the correct spot on the platform and wait ... one couple ahead of us. More and more people arrive, most of them tourists who don’t seem to understand how ‘queueing for the train’ works in Japan. You stand in a line, usually parallel to the tracks with the head of the line at the marked spot on the platform for the door you need to use. You don’t mill about like a disorderly rabble or try to do an end run around people who are already there.
Eventually the train arrives and on we get. Unlike the Shinkansen where the carriages have doors at each end (‘do I need this door or that door?), this train has doors only at one end .... which for us turns out to be the wrong end. No matter. The Keisei Skyliner takes less than 40 minutes to Keisei-Ueno station (which is right next door to, but separate from the Japan Rail (JR) Ueno station.). The JR Narita Express goes to Tokyo station and although that’s only a couple of stops south of Ueno on the JR Yamanote line, it takes well over an hour. The reason becomes obvious when you look at the map - the Keisei line runs in a fairly straight line from Narita to Keisei-Ueno whereas the JR tracks follow a longer course to Tokyo station, rather like a somewhat flattened ‘u’ or ‘v’.
We arrive soon enough, find our way out of the station by the correct exit and directly across the street to the hotel. We can’t check-in but we leave the bags. In Japan, rules are rules, so if check-in time is 3 pm, that means 3 pm, not some earlier time (like 10.45) when you just happen to arrive.
We’ve never really spent any time in the Ueno area - or so I thought. We’re right next to Ueno Park, which in addition to the park, has a zoo and a number of museums, including the Tokyo National Museum. Looking through some old (2007) photos a couple of weeks ago, I realised there were some of what was obviously the Tokyo National Museum, so I guess we must have been here before though I must admit I don’t remember it. To the east of Ueno is Asakusa and Senso-ji, one of the major temples in Tokyo which we have been to several times and of which more later.
To the northwest of Ueno is Yanaka, an ‘old Tokyo’ area, with - looking at the map - a large cemetery, an incredible number of temples and an old ‘shopping street’ (butcher, baker, candlestick maker etc.). The plan was to go for a wander round Yanaka, walk along the shopping street, stop by the gallery of an artist we’d seen featured recently on tv in a NHK programme, have lunch (possibly in a cafe that he mentioned in the tv programme) and eventually head west over to the Nezu Shrine, which apparently was worth visiting (although perhaps primarily for its azaleas).
With that plan in mind, we headed back to the station to get a train a couple of stops to Nippori, from where we could simply head west over to the shopping street and then ramble our way around from there. Although technology has its faults, it makes life so much easier than it used to be in the days of paper maps - with maps and a GPS function on the phone to tell you where you are, you can wander to your hearts content, without much fear of getting lost.
On our way back out, we were passed by a bunch of (idiot) tourists on Mario Carts. These are go-karts you can rent for a couple of hours and go out as a group around Tokyo. Why anybody would want to drive a low-to-the-ground go-kart, without a helmet, in Tokyo traffic is beyond me. Perhaps I’m too risk averse but the prospect of being squashed like a bug by a truck that didn’t see me somehow does not appeal.
When we get to Nippori station, we head out through the barriers (hold your phone to the reader, bing!, it reads the Suica card on the phone in a flash, the gates snap open and off you go) and ..... where the hell are the station exits? We wander round but for the life of us we can’t find an exit. There are some JR gates if you want to go in and get on a JR train but that’s not what we want - we just want to exit the station. We start to head off down a hall way that looks like it might be promising but soon stop to consult the (phone) map to try to resolve our dilemma. A nearby lady station attendant sees us standing there and asks if she can help. We explain, as best we can, our dilemma. She takes us over to a manned gate and explains (or at least we assume that’s what she was doing) to the man on the gate our problem. He didn’t look totally convinced and had to use his machine to ‘read’ the Suica cards on our phones but at least then gave us (perhaps somewhat reluctantly) two paper tickets we could use to go through the correct gates. To our soon-to-be-realised embarrassment, we had just seen the gates and headed through them .... and had totally failed to see the enormous (and in hindsight, blindingly obvious) sign (see the photo below) that these were transfer-only gates (from Keisei to JR and other rail lines). If nothing else, this yet again reinforced the unwritten rule that, if you’re having a problem, just stand there looking like a totally clueless gaijin and it won’t be long before somebody stops and asks if they can help.
We wandered along the ‘Yanaka Ginza Shopping Street’ though it can’t be said that it was particularly interesting. We navigated our way to the Hagi Cafe, which had been mentioned in the NHK tv programme by our artist. Lunch was good, the service polite if a little slow. A limited menu - curry lunch for me, noodle lunch for A-M and ‘season of sorbet’ for dessert. The seasonal sorbet, whatever it was, was nice enough. As you could have either a green salad or the sorbet, the woman part of the American couple sitting behind us of course had to know what the sorbet was before she would order. The waitress had to go off and find out while we sat there trying not to turn around and say ‘Does it matter? It’s a sorbet. It’ll be nice enough (which it was)’
Lunch over, we continued to wander the back streets, intent on navigating our way to the Gallery of the artist we had seen on tv. On the way to his Gallery, we stopped in at one of the local temples he mentioned as one of his favourites (at least for artistic inspiration). An American, with a bushy beard and an affectation for Japanese style clothing, he’s nothing if not instantly recognizable - at least if you’ve seen him on tv. As we approached his Gallery, the doors suddenly opened and out he rushed, across the street to grab his bicycle, which was leaning against the wall opposite. As we attempted to engage him in conversation, including that we’d seen him on tv, he said he couldn’t stop as he had to get to the shop before it closed at 1.30 (it was now 1.25) or he wouldn’t get any lunch. He’d be back a little later he said and with that, he leapt on his bicycle and pedaled furiously away. Oh well ....
As it was just curiosity on our part, rather than any serious interest in his, no doubt, hideously expensive art creations, we continued our perambulations around Yanaka. At one point, we needed to cross the road, which A-M did, while I stopped to read some signs outside a temple. As she stood there waiting for me, the door behind her suddenly opened, leaving her looking rather startled in the photo I was just taking of her.
Eventually we navigated our way over to the Nezu Shrine. After passing through the torii gate and walking up the entrance path, we immediately found the substantial bank of azaleas on the left. If we had been here a few weeks ago, they would have undoubtedly been magnificent but by now only some of the bushes were still in bloom. After touring the grounds and viewing the shrine, we headed for home. Do we walk home or do we take the subway .... given that taking the subway, even though it was only one stop, went too far south, so we would have to walk back north? As the walk back north from the subway was going to be shorter than just walking home, we opted for the subway.
On the way back to the hotel, we spotted a Cafe Renoir, up on the second floor of a building so we headed up there for coffee and a sit down. A somewhat upmarket cafe, the place was fairly full but they found us a table. A matcha coffee jelly float for A-M, a beer for me and a slice of Belgian chocolate cake. As we sat there, somewhat over in a corner, there was a gentleman sitting on A-M’s left, though she couldn’t see him because there was a pillar between them. Headphones on, intently watching something on the screen on the small laptop in front of him. Some movement caught my eye and he seemed to be adjusting the waist of his trousers - next thing you know, his hand disappears down his trousers and he ‘re-arranges’ himself. The hand re-appears and he continues viewing... Because we were over in a corner (more or less) and the table in front of him effectively shielded him from view of everybody else, this no doubt went unobserved by everyone but me - I just happened to be sitting at a 45 degree angle to him, where neither the pillar nor the table obstructed the view.
We headed back to the hotel and later went out for a wander round, ending up in a yakitori place. The waiter didn’t really speak any English (not his fault, obviously) but it made figuring out what the five items in the ‘combo’ plate were a bit tricky. We think they were all chicken - and we expected there might be a bit of gizzard in there somewhere. Three out of the five were fine, one was so-so but the fifth, which I tackled, was like a rubber tyre. No amount of chewing made much impression on it. In trying to get the pieces off the skewer, one of the pieces came flying off and bounced on the floor to land over by a nearby table, from where I did my best to surreptitiously retrieve it. We stuck to ordering a la carte from that point, based on the three out of the five in the combo plate that were ok. All in all, not the best we’ve had by a long way. Given the so-so dinner, we stopped on the way back at a Family Mart and got some wine, sandwiches and ice cream. Back to the room for dinner, part 2.
The bed is fairly comfortable but the one pillow each is flat as a pancake. Despite that, we slept fairly well although we were awake pretty early.