Weather: sunny and hot low 20°C, high 29°C
Accommodation: Kimi Ryokan
The day before we’d seen a hop-on/hop-off bus, and as we’d had good experiences with them in the UK we decided to try it (and hopefully it would give our feet a rest). We’d looked up information online and knew a bus should be at Ueno at 9:50, however Eskil walked slowly so we didn’t make it. The website hadn’t shown exactly where at Ueno it picks up, but we’d assumed it would be well signposted. It wasn’t. Even the tourist information staff at Ueno didn’t know where it was. Eventually we gave up and took the train to Tokyo Station as the day before we’d seen signs to the Marunouchi Building. This time we found the stop easily. We took 2 loops of the buses, first to Tokyo Bay and then to Roppongi Hills.
Eskil was then hungry, so we attempted to find the food court under Daimaru that we’d been at the day before. GAH!
We got lost underground even though there were maps (there was construction, so the maps didn’t reflect what was actually there). So the next strategy was to use our Suica cards to go through Tokyo Station – the cards did NOT like that. Once you enter, they expect you to leave from a different station. It was the start of Silver Week as well, so train stations were a bit crazy.
We were hungry and cranky, so we just pushed through the gates. Then Eskil was cranky and tired so said he didn’t want noodles, so we wound up getting him chips from McDonald’s. Again we couldn’t find anywhere to sit, so we sat on the ground on the western side of the train station. Spirits were LOW.
At least from here we knew we could walk through Diamaru and under the station to get back to the bus stop. We took the final loop, Ueno and Asakusa.
To be honest these bus tours were a real disappointment. The commentary wasn’t good, and it wasn’t well synced with where the bus actually was. It seemed whenever they finally did mention anything interesting, the track would then skip and take us to another part of the commentary. Plus they were often packed, hot, and Eskil was squashing Scott for a lot of the time.
We took the bus in a loop back to Tokyo Station, then went to the top of Diamaru to check out Tokyu Hands. It’s another stationery store, and it wasn’t as good as even the small Ito Ya in Tobu. We took the train back to Ikebukuro and went straight to ‘our’ restaurant. We were very tired and cranky. Eskil was tired waiting for his food.
We got beer at the 7-11 on the way home and had a few games of Monkey Wins in the lounge.
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2015/09/19/.