We had read an interesting sounding walk in Lonely Planet, which takes you to Nippori through a neighbourhood that, unlike most of Tokyo, wasn’t heavily bombed in the Second World War – so you get a feeling for what Edo might have been like. We started the day off getting our train pass and making our way to Nippori. From here we walked through the Yanaka Cemetery. It is right in the middle of the neighbourhood and was very interesting. We took LOTS of photos so haven’t yet had time to upload even a small portion of them. The neighbourhood is riddled with old temples of all sorts of descriptions and small sects – often with their own cemetery attached as well. We headed south through the cemetery, then north on what looks like a main road on the map but in fact can barely allow a small car to pass a human. It was a really cool neighbourhood – small buildings often with just footpaths rather than ‘streets’ between them. This route took us on a loop up to the Nishi-Nippori train station, then we went to Ueno Koen (Park). We bought lunch at a small milk bar type shop – sushi boxes and interesting looking rice crackers.
Then it was time to the Tokyo National Museum. This was a fabulous museum. One of the reasons we liked it is it gave a few examples of each sort of thing it had – but not an enormous number that totally exhausts you with the sheer volume of things to look at. And it really is a marvelous collection – ceramics, weapons, prints, sculpture.
The day before while walking in the Tokyo / Ginza area, we’d spent some time looking through a stationary store. Japanese stationary stores are VERY cool. And as there were a few things we’d already regretted not getting – and as we had our most excellent rail pass – we returned to the area and got some cards and a globe.
Again avoiding the rush hour on the trains, we made our way back to Ikebukuro and purchased our Narita Express Tickets for the next day. Doing this proved a bit challenging – in part because a JR employee was trying too hard to help me – but we got them in the end and were all set for our trip to the airport the next day.
On the walk home we scoped out a place for dinner. When we returned to the ryokan, Scott thought relaxing his weary body in the traditional Japanese bath sounded like a good idea. He booked us in with the front desk and had our bath at 7 pm. Or ATTEMPTED to have our bath. You first take a shower, then attempt to get into insanely hot water that we should be excited to know is in a Japanese cedar bath. Scott got in for perhaps as much as 3 painful minutes of sheer hell. Disa had a shower then put her foot in long enough to say she did (not very long). I don’t know – it was hot and horribly humid in Tokyo – the ‘traditional bath’ just seemed adding pain to pain!
We had to go to our room to cool down for a long time before Scott stopped looking like a lobster and visibly sweating. When he was able to get clothes on, we went out for dinner – this time not ordering a set menu but pointing at stuff. Our waiter felt pressure to tell us what everything was, but we just said OK to everything. We ordered sake and when he asked whether we’d have it hot or cold – we said cold. However when he left it on the table he said ‘Watch out – it’s very cold!’ and realised he had them turned around in his head. Oh well, he’s still miles ahead of our Japanese in English! Upon returning to the ryokan, we read the Japan Times while drinking green tea.
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