Ah! Slept in until 8.30! It felt great, although Disa’s face and body in general was strangely swollen. But better to be strangely swollen and exploring Tokyo then strangely swollen at home!Our first order of business was to replenish our funds. Despite what you’d expect, in Japan they pay for things in cash. Although we had gotten some before leaving home, we’d already paid for our accommodation and needed a bit more. So we headed out into the streets of Ikebukuro looking for a bank. The one we entered only had local ATMs, however an extremely helpful man inside directed us to the post office where there were ATMs that would even allow strange Tasmanian credit union cards.
Next stop was to find out about a day pass for travel on the train that Disa had found out about. So we headed into what appeared to be a JR travel information office. Before we even had the sweet, sweet air conditioning around us, a helpful man presented us with a map to the JR information booth we actually need – they must get tourists stumbling into their offices frequently. We navigated through the maze of bodies in Ikebukuro station and found the information booth. There the girl behind the counter had a laminated instruction placard to show us how to get the rail pass. So off to the nearby machine which worked exactly as the placard said it would, and we had our day passes. Easy!
Then we were off to Tokyo station, and from there walked towards the Imperial Palace. You cannott actually go in, but we spent some time walking around the moats and seeing the Nijubashi Bridge. From there we walked to the Hibiya Koen (Park) where we did some geocaching and saw more turtles and nice gardens. We had lunch in Ginza, then walked north to the Imperial Palace Gardens. The gardens weren’t as exciting as we thought they would be, but the small museum there was great with fantastic ceramics and blissful air conditioning.
After this we took the train to Shibuya and Sinjuku just to see them – they were full of people and tall buildings, much like ‘our’ neighbourhood. So we took the train ‘home’ to Ikebukuro before the rush hours began and went through the Traditional Japanese Craft shop – which was also nicely air conditioned. We stopped for an iced coffee, then had a look through the department store Tobu – spent lots of time in the stationary, kimono, and housewares sections.
Sticky with sweat after a day of walking around in heat and humidity, we returned to the ryokan and had showers, then a late dinner at the restaurant we’d eaten at the evening before. When we returned to the ryokan we had beer from the vending machine (vending machines in Tokyo are great! Cold beverages wherever you go!). A hot day with lots of walking, but so much fun!