We land early, by about 35 minutes, at 06:20 and pass through the airport like a dose of salts. Immigration is rapid, and our cases are with us after only a few minutes. We are waiting for our driver at least 20 minutes before our scheduled landing time.
Unfortunately 45 minutes later we are still waiting, and the transfer company’s alleged 24/7 hotline isn’t being answered. We phone the Spanish booking agent who also tries to contact the transfer company to no avail. She says to get a taxi and she will sort out the mess.
As soon we’re driving away we get a flurry of messages, basically the lazy driver didn’t wait where he should have and was up the street, but this is not our problem now. I leave an appropriate review on Google!!
Twenty minutes later we are at our hotel in the Ginza area of the city, drop off out bags and make a quick change of clothes then head off for our first ever Japanese adventure. Firstly to the nearby markets area, where there is a fish market and street stalls, mostly it’s all about food, but there are several knife shops and some selling religious iconography. The umbrellas are a pain and we quickly move onwards.
We enjoy a Snickers (51g for about 70 pence so not too bad) and then a machine vending frozen fish including whale sausage!
Next up is a Buddhist Temple which has many small shrines and areas of prayer over two floors. We remove our footwear before entering. It is very calming and quite the anthesis of the prevailing masses elsewhere. I manage a couple of photos before I see a “no photo” sign.
As we walk we pass a park dedicated to the memory of the 160,000 lives lost in Tokyo’s 1923 earthquake, a moving memorial to such a terrible disaster, the WWII dead are added later.
Tokyo is BIG, real big! Just to show perspective, New York’s five boroughs are about 300 sq miles, London about 600 sq miles and Tokyo is over 850 sq miles – none of these figures include their greater metropolitan spread. So today we are just exploring a very small segment of the city, on our return in four weeks we are staying in a different area to discover other bits.
We are braving the rain all day, it comes and goes, at least we are prepared. Crossing the Sumida river again we can barely see the top of the Sky Tower which we’ve sensibly knocked off our to-do list. Moving on we next visit the Asakusa area which has probably the most famous shrine Sensō-Ji – unfortunately with fame comes tourists!
The worst thing today so far is the brolleys – it would seem that everyone in Tokyo has a very large umbrella and these are deployed at the fist drop so no matter where we go we are fighting people who care not one jot for the additional space their large-footprint canopy occupies – they are coming though regardless. We move on, recrossing the river again and pass a maritime university, and then to a calmer shrine in a park with no tourists at all, the difference is palpable.
We finish our day of shrines with another quiet one, this is Tomioka Hachiman Shrine and we are privileged to witness a (semi) private blessing for a family, complete with ethereal chanting and beating drums. Enough for one day we head back to check in and change from our wet clothes and put our feet up after 30k steps and 14.2 miles.
We have located an appealing restaurant, but it’s full – we quickly realise that nearly all small eateries are full from opening and lots of folks seem quite happy to queue but we wont – so dinner is at the Marriot which is nice enough – carbonara and steak curry plus a crazy priced but rather good Californian Chardonnay.
It’s been a long couple of days so time to return to our bijou room, hit the sac and write up the day. For tomorrow we sail …
