The Tour Begins

We had a delicious sleep in after a solid night’s sleep, and after a pleasant breakfast, had time for a walk around the neighbourhood so we are familiar with the landscape, restaurants, railway station and supermarkets.

There must be a Japanese Standard for eggs, as the bowl of boiled eggs were a uniform bleached-white of what looked to be identical size. I noticed that eggs in the supermarket have the same qualities. When I lift the lid on a carton eggs, I really do like to see the variety of colours and spots, and even sometimes, a bit of left-over bird poo. It is reassuring to see that your eggs have come from an actual chook, and not the product of an automated egg-manufacturing laboratory.

Despite the early chill of the morning, Monday turned out to be a gloriously sunny day, and perfect for a days outing seeing some sights of Tokyo. 

First stop was the Tsukiji Outer Market. It was mainly food, with an astonishing range of street food . The streets were jam packed with people, many tourists, jostling for their few square inches of personal space. I have to say that I am not comfortable with a pressing crowd, so despite the interesting array of food and the amazing olfactory sensations, it was good to eventually escape. And with all those people clutching their little parcels and sticks of food, and not a single garbage bin to be seen, there was not a skerrick of litter. An Australian street would be strewn with paper, cans, coffee cups and food scraps.

Second stop was the Meiji Shrine with a Shinto temple and a range of other  sites set in a serene park of forest, lawns, lakes and paths. After a short observation at the temple, Jen and enjoyed a slow stroll along the shady paths and absorbing the peace and smells of the forest just a hundred metres or so from the hustle of the city. Not that the city streets seem all that bustling. We had imagined a city seething with people rushing to destinations, shoppers struggling with parcels, streets packed with traffic, horns blazing. Rather, it had the tempo of a mid-sized outback town on a Sunday afternoon.

The third of our quite contrasting  stops was the Tokyo Tower, looking like an orange Eiffel Tower and at one stage, the tallest tower in the world. We spent some time on one of the decks about half way up with wonderful views over the city which seemed to stretch to the horizon with office blocks and apartment buildings packed in tightly. Shrouded in a light cover of cloud in the distance was Mt Fuji. I tried to resist Jenny’s overtures for crepes, filled with iceceam, coffee-jelly and coffee cake. I failed – gloriously.

Now home and resting, catching up with emails and messages. We had dinner with a couple of new friends, Carol and John from Evans Head. We had tempura at a local cafe and it was delicious.

So – not a lot on this first post. I will try to garner some more interesting things to write, though things that are “interesting” tend to be things that have gone wrong, or produced an injury and I probably want to avoid those.

Tomorrow is Tuesday and we have another tour – not sure where. Wednesday we are catching up with our friends Machiko and Satoshi, their daughter Keiko and her husband and their two children. We will venture forth on the subway to meet them.

Mata ne.

Bill