Japan and U.S. Domestic Travel Blog

Travel blog, starting with a trip to Japan March 20, 2010 through April 4, 2010 and continuing through both local and long-distance travel thereafter.

Friday, October 4, 2019

Day 9 - Family Japan - "Kyoto to Tokyo, Asakusa and Tokyo Solamachi"

Day 9 (December 22, 2018)

On this hectic logistical nightmare of a Saturday, we were obligated to return to Tokyo.  Looking back at the morning, I see we don’t have any photos and I really do know why.  We left the house by 7:15AM and emailed the owner to complete the check-out process, our Shinkasen from Kyoto to Shinagawa left at 7:45AM so there was no time to waste. We are dragging one large suitcase, two smaller suitcases and Terra had her own bag to drag along, this on top of the laptop backpack I am carrying and a full backpack he has on.  It was still way too much luggage despite our best efforts and I decide to make a concrete effort to get this luggage number down even lower on our next trip!  The Shinkansen ride out to Asakusa was the “normal” 3 hours or so, we then disembark to several options, but decide to go through Ueno (Shinagawa > Ueno) to the Asakusa metro line to get off at Asakusa station itself.  Even taking this option to get to the nearest station, we were looking at a 10-15 minute walk to the apartment according to Google Maps.  Here a series of unfortunate events unfolded where I realized the Japanese announcement (very odd to not have several languages spoken) on the metro explained if you were in a wheelchair/needed an elevator you should be getting off from a different car on the train (a car we were far from at this point and it was already stopping).  I tried to voice my concerns as we disembarked, and all to quickly find out my broken Japanese did in fact hear correctly that yes, we were screwed.  There were only stairs here, in the underground metro station, 5 stories underground.  After stopping a station worker to double check, he kind of chuckled and said “no elevator”... we would not be the only stupid tourist to make this mistake.  I was justified later by seeing NUMEROUS tourists dragging bags up these stairs during our stay at the little apartment in Asakusa.

With a full workout in already, taking turns dragging the cases up a flight and coming back to the next, we made it to street level where our “10-15 minute walk” began.  Thinking we wouldn’t easily find a taxi that could hold everything and not 100% sure to where we were heading, walking was the only logical choice.  It was a straight shot, with the Sumida River and Tokyo Skytree on our right the entire time, would have been nice (and turned out to be nice), when not burdened by a huge amount of luggage.  But alas, it took a solid 20 minutes in this sad state, and we finally stumbled into the apartment at 11:40AM.  It was a generous size for a Tokyo apartment and I got it for a steal of a price ($700USD for two weeks), with two bedrooms, a dining/kitchen area, full bathroom and balconies overlooking both the Sumida River and Tokyo Skytree.  Falling asleep to the lights and glow of the tower turned out to be pretty cool indeed.

With the logistical nightmare behind us (and very glad I made the decision early on we would only be moving our bags once this trip!), it was off to the Tokyo Edo museum.  I wanted to see the Kamikiri (paper cutting) demonstration later that afternoon (there was one at 1PM and one at 3PM), so off we went again. Trying to navigate Tokyo for the first time in over 8 years was a challenge. I still feel that visiting Japan and visiting Tokyo are different sides of the same coin, the overall feeling is the same, but the method in which things work is totally different.  We discern that a small metro trip to a certain station and then a taxi ride right up to the museum was the best way, as it was also raining at this point and we were pretty darn hungry from the workout.  The taxi driver did not speak English (this is Tokyo, they lied to me!), but finally understood which museum we were talking about after a few attempts to communicate. It seemed he had never driven there before, for a major museum I was super confused by this and never found out why it was so difficult to locate. We finally got inside the museum, check our umbrella into their umbrella locker (I loved those inventions) and get our tickets. After that, it was time to head straight to the floor with the cafe. A nice traditional lunch was had (think grilled fish, fried chicken, ramen noodles), it was pretty delicious for standard museum food. There was also an exhibit from an anime movie that I wasn't familiar with, right there on the cafe floor. Once we ate and paid, it was time to get to the main exhibition hall. The first thing that greets you once inside is a replica of Edo bridge as it once stood, pretty cool sight to see.  The exhibit halls only made up this floor and the floor beneath it (of an 8 story building).  Something you will often see in Tokyo is a huge building where only several of the floors are public space.  Making the most out of the space they do have and utilizing other floors for office, education or government usage.  The main floor here had a lot of replicas of the (Edo) Tokyo area from various time periods, complete with castles and building layouts and the lower floor contained working replicas of farming equipment, technology from the decades, full size house replicas you could enter and finally some fine art.  The middle of the lower floor also contained the demonstration/exhibit stage where the Kamikiri took place.  Being we had to eat first, it was 1:45PM or so by this time.  We started by looking at (and taking pictures) of the dioramas and emperor items on display at the top floor, then slowly moving to the lower exhibits closer to the performance stage. The demonstration started exactly at 3PM and had a few rows of tables in front of the stage with papers and scissors set out, the performance itself was interesting, but I was disappointed that the “master” only did two pieces. After that, she then expected the crowd to do their own with little to no instructions.
 
Terra ended up frustrated by how badly both of hers turned out, so I quickly turned her attention to some of the bicycles and carriages we could get on and take pictures with instead.  Overall it was a very “standard” museum, the likes of a Smithsonian stateside.  I did enjoy most of the exhibits, but it is difficult to entertain a six year old for very long in such places.  As a result I end up getting separated from Matt and glancing over most of the items on display while walking her around.  I would probably go back again depending on what they seasonally have out and what demonstrations were going, but it wasn't a must see overall (especially with a kid in tow).




Having not been in Japan since 2010, I was unaware of exactly how Asakusa looked and was set up now.  The Skytree changed the entire landscape, it wasn’t just a tower, but adjoining malls and an entire shopping district from what we had seen during the construction phase.  That being said, I did stumble across another Japanese trip bloggers journey there recently and came to understand that one of the two malls displayed rolling exhibits on the 8th floor and that a Macross Ship model was currently there.  Since it was close to the apartment and we were already exhausted it was decided this would be the only other thing accomplished for the day.  As expected, this area was super crowded on a Saturday afternoon.  There were some tourists, but it was mainly locals or other Japanese in the mall, Skytower and adjoining shops.  We found a second Ghibli store (now realizing these were a thing) and some other shops to duck into before setting our sites on the 8th floor goal. 

A series of escalators led us up the correct path to the Macross ship, to our surprise, there was also a live robotic demonstrations going on across from it on the same floor.  It turned out to be a great time chatting with the engineers there, most of which seemed to be college students that LOVED practicing their English on us.  It was super enjoyable to play with Mars rover-like bots, bots that rescue people and others that are being used in situations like Fukushima.  They were really developing the next generation here.

And where there is a large mall in Tokyo, there's a Pokemon Center!  This one being one of their “standard sizes”, we always enjoyed seeing what the exclusive merchandise was, checking the capsule machines and looking at their statues and this visit was no different.  The exclusive here was “Pikachu with Skytree” merchandise, from pencils to plushies they had an entire stand just for merchandise with this image.  As seen here, the stores mascot was Rayquaza, pretty cool all lit up. We left the mall around dinner time to head to our first CoCo curry.  Like most foreigners, I apparently fall into line with “I love CoCo curry”.  Probably a little too much based on how many times we ended up at this spot over two weeks, up to this point we had avoided the “fast food” trap aside from the necessary McDonald’s trips.  Oh, but I did enjoy knowing where to go for something quick, cheap and tasty.  After my standard curry dinner and way too much water, we headed over to the grocery store in order to stock the apartment with breakfast staples and hop a taxi back across the river to the apartment.  We were literally located ACROSS the Sumida River from Solamachi, but to walk to bridge, over and back down the road it would take a solid 45 minutes.  Not worth it in the blustery air with groceries in hand.  We had to wait in line at a taxi stand (also a new and quizzical experience for us), but finally get inside a taxi and within 10 minutes and 1,000 yen we were dropped a block from the apartment door and done for the night, very exhausted for a 7PM turn-in.

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