10/18 - Day 14

 October 18, 2026

This was our first day in Tokyo. 

The Metropolitan had a huge breakfast buffet. Mike was a happy camper.


They even had a map.

At 9:00 we met our guide in the lobby. Her name is Kayee and she is from Hong Kong.

We traveled to our destinations on the subway and even a local had trouble getting the right tickets for the right train from these kiosks.

Turns out the subway system utilizes trains from multiple companies. They are not a unified system like NYC (now, at least - NYC at one point used have multiple subway companies). That makes things a little complicated.

One thing I found curious was that you could rent a locker in the subway station. That used to be a favorite terrorist tool.

Our first stop was the National Museum.

Pictures don't really do justice to the beauty of the art, but here's one to prove we were there. 

There were a few of these scrolls that were 30 (?) feet long.

I found the explanatory boards helpful. This one substantiated the labor required to make lacquerware.

We left the museum and headed for one of the many shopping strips.


I'm following the twins again.

This is one of my favorite kind of stalls. The bin closest to the center aisle of this guy's stall is pig's feet. Ready to eat!

We walked to the Sensoji Asakusa. It was absolutely mobbed.


To the left was a five-story pagoda. We couldn't go inside.

Then this procession started to appear to the sound of drumes. Cops cleared the road and these guys proceeded, followed by a sedan chair with a half dozen women inside playing traditional instruments and in full make-up.


We thought it might be a funeral or that the Emperor was in town. Turns out they were selling stuff. Limited time, not available at street vendors... hilarious.

We left the madhouse and heard more drums. We stopped to see a street performer with her pet monkey. 

It was just a little sad.

We discovered that noodle places usually have something that each of us can or will eat. This place had a kiosk for ordering. It also took cash and dispensed change. Makes front-line workers unnecessary.

With this system, you just have cook and a support person bringing drinks and clearing.


One room kitchen. And you eat at the bar.

Since this is a tourist area, you can rent kimonos or hire some kid to pull you in a rickshaw.


I find this slightly offensive, but hey, it's a living.


I don't know how I feel if it's a woman pulling the rickshaw. I wish we stayed long enough for me to see her do it.

We walked to the Skytree. That yellow squash is the symbol for Asahi beer. Our guide said it's called the "Golden Poop".

On the way we saw a paddleball game going on. I stopped to chat with one of the guys and it's that game that is popular in Spain. It uses a tennis ball but it's in an enclosed court so it's a little like racquetball.

The Skytree lines are long, it's probably pretty expensive, and it's basically a huge shopping mall. Overrated.

By this time it was 3:30 and rather than try to squeeze in the fish market, we decided to call it a day. It took us nearly an hour to get back to the hotel, so we probably couldn't have done anything else anyway before she was off the clock.

Even when it's busy, see how orderly the Japanese queue for a subway.

We decided on Chinese again and I found a place a few minutes away. It turned out to be a hot neighborhood with lots of young people out for a cheap Sunday dinner. The place I picked didn't have English menus and the next place we went to was packed so we didn't even get a chance to see about menus. The third place, all within a few hundred feet of each other, worked out because it utilized a kiosk, just like the lunch place although one of the guys had to come over and help us because we were going by pictures and google translate and kept getting error messages.

Another two-person operation.

So we went from noodles at lunch to pasta for dinner.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

before the trip began

Image
Note: I usually write a post every day but only send out the link to the first post. If you want to see subsequent posts, you need to fool around a little with the website. One way to do it is to change the URL in the address bar to the next day (e.g., "Day 2"). Another way to do it is to use the search function (use the magnifying glass). Or you can go to the archive and choose September 2026 or October 2026 and go from there. You may see a link that says "More Posts" at the bottom of the page. That will show you more posts too. Good luck and thanks for reading!  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since 2012, Mike Reagan and I have planned and gone on bike trips over the summer, usually to European destinations. Others who have joined us have been Marty Canavan, Vince Giardina, and Stu Koman. Walter Putter has been a regular for the past five or more years, and we have redu...
Read more

10/14 - Day 10

Image
 October 14, 2026 The day started with rain. Our cute little hotel prepared breakfast for us and left it in the fridge. There wasn't much for a picture after we attacked it. Since it was raining, Romain took us to a knife factory. There was a museum attached to the factory discussing the history of knives. Here's the factory. It's a curious building, apparently built explicitly for the factory. We called it a grain silo. Here's the gift shop. There were a pair of serious bikepackers at the gift shop. Turns out they were French so Romain had a good time connecting with them. They biked from Europe across Asia. The factory was fun. We walked above the workers on a catwalk and watched them turn slabs of steel into knife blades. There was no one working at this station, probably a furnace. Most of the workers seemed like kids (maybe 20-somethings). Romain thought they might train here and then go off and start their own shops. In the gift shop building was this creative dis...
Read more

10/6 - Day 2

Image
 Tuesday, 10/6 We spend most of today in the air in a little aluminum cylinder. We were supposed to leave at 1:45 but problems with one of the onboard computers caused a two-hour delay. During that time we were allowed to pace the aisles and get to know our neighbors. I slept. It became Tuesday when we crossed the international date line. The flight was long but not difficult except for about a half hour of turbulence over Japan. We jumped through a number of hoops at the Tokyo airport and we were met by our driver. Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of him with a sign that read "Jeffrey Chin - 3 guests". Who knows when that will happen again? The driver didn't speak much English, so we chatted with ourselves and watched the city roll by. Because of the delay, we arrived after 6:00pm instead of 4:00 and it was already dark. We'll have a little time to see the city in daylight tomorrow when we head to the train station. Our travel a...
Read more