Jetlag led to an early morning for all of us. By 4:45am we were bright eyed, Henry was making it clear that he was ready for breakfast, and the sun was up. I went to book our bus for tomorrow from Tokyo to Mogame when I saw that the one daytime bus was sold out. Eventually I figured out an alternate circuitous, longer, and more expensive route where we would bus instead to Matsumoto and then take trains to Magome. We haven’t seen any cereal at stores here, so Henry had bread and milk for breakfast, Viki had a frozen smoothie made by some futuristic 7-Eleven blender, and I had a chicken sandwich.
I googled “One day in Tokyo itinerary”, and that’s what we set out to do. We started by taking the metro to Asakusa to see Tokyo’s most famous temple, Senso-Ji. It was tough figuring out transportation, with much writing just being in Japanese characters, ticket machines not accepting credit cards, and the metro system being fragmented (so transfering involves buying a separate ticket at your transfer point). But strangers were quite friendly and happy to help us decode these simple tasks, so we eventually made it to Asakusa.
Asakusa was crazy touristy (though even this most touristy part of Japan still seemed predominantly filled with Japanese tourists). Stalls lined the pedestrianized zones selling perfect looking fruit, sweet breads, and mystery meats. We took in the huge temple, with its delicately curved roof, the giant flashes of black characters on red background, and the smell of incense smoking from cauldrons. We saw the 5 level pagoda, the Sensoji shrine, and the surrounding garden area. We saw a queue for some kind of nice smelling sweet bread, so joined the queue and tasted one.
Next up on our itinerary was the Shibuya crossing, Tokyo’s famous scramble crossing, that can up have up to 500,000 people cross per day. The journey involved a very crowded metro, where we were fortunate to get seats for the 40 minute journey and Henry had a nap, probably gloating about having woken us up at 4:45am, only to then get to nap and be carried around during the day. We had ramen in a small ramen shop that was filled with business people sitting individually, efficiently slurping up their noodles. Viki went from being famished and demanding lunch that instant, to being instantly full after 3 bites. Luckily Henry was kind enough to get through some noodles.
We explored Shibuya, bought some plastic-wrapped bananas, and made our way back to the hotel for a 2 hour nap from 2-4pm. We went out for an evening stroll through the upscale Lidabashi area where we’re staying, and had gyoza and sushi for dinner. We’re hoping for a good sleep tonight before a travel day tomorrow.