Weather: rainy and humid: low 16°C, high 19°C
Accommodation: Kimi Ryokan
Eskil was up at 6:30 am, so Scott took him downstairs to the common room so I could try to sleep in. I couldn’t get back to sleep, but I had a nice relax until 7:15. Scott went out to get breakfast, and brought back goodies from Vie de France and coffee. (Vie de France and Andersons had the best take-away at that time of the morning.)
I played lots of rounds of the game we called ‘Monkey wins’. This game used the face cards from several different decks and required you to find matches of the same colour and face. Sorry – MONKEY was allowed to make the matches. The ‘rules’ were very flexible to accommodate him. Adults are not allowed to win. I did laundry, and at 11:30 the boys went to bed for a nap. I chatted with Jim, Jill and Cloe from Sydney (the family staying at Kimi for a week for the same days we were).
The laundry is on an outside balcony. It was ¥200 per wash (including free washing powder) and ¥100 for 30 minutes of drying. There was a place to dry things in the sun, but as it was a very rainy day I used the drier.
At 1:30 pm the boys were finished their nap, and we went out to explore. We had lunch at Tokyo Underground Ramen under Tobu. It was a challenge being faced with our first automated paying, but we got there eventually! Each ramen place is different. This one had quite thick, gravy like broth that was both porky and fishy tasting, but good. Eskil’s bowl, fork, and spoon were blue ones exactly like his IKEA set; he really enjoyed the noodles.
We spent 5 hours going through Tobu, looking for a wind chime we’d seen in 2007, checking out Ito Ya stationery, shopping at Uniglo (I got Snoopy slippers, Scott got a jumper, and Eskil got a lion shirt), looking at homewares, and buying 4 self-inking stamps for Eskil and washi tape. Collecting the stamps became an addiction for Eskil! We had a rest in the Tobu Starbucks, and Eskil enjoyed starting to play with his stamps and washi tape in the notebook I had gotten for him for the trip.
For dinner we grabbed convenience store food – noodles and chicken katsu. Eskil like the noodles and ‘fish’. Scott and I tried another 2 different beers; the research continues!
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2015/09/17/.