Japan 2017: 23 September: Kawaguchiko to Tokyo

Today we travel back to Tokyo to spend our second-to-last night in Japan.

We're staying again at Katsutaro ryokan.

Today was a day for winding down and easing our way back into post-vacation life. As a result, we planned to take it easy and just do a few things, while still putting in our daily miles. After all, we're going to be spending 16 hours on airplanes tomorrow and we've consumed a lot of delicious calories during the past couple weeks..

Given the trouble we'd had finding places that were open for breakfast and that also provided Japanese-style breakfast rather than imitation Western food, we decided to try out the hotel's buffet. It proved to be a really good choice: the hot table included broiled fish, chicken scrambled in egg, sweetened omelettes, French fries, a stir fry of mushrooms and tofu, plus a tureen of miso soup. For the cold table, there were three types of sweet pickles, nori (seaweed), seaweed salad, and two types of fruit salad. Also some white bread products that we both ignored. Last but not least, all the coffee one could want.

Suitably stuffed, we headed upstairs for an e-mail check, then headed out on our day. First stop was at the Shitamachi Museum, at the end of Ueno park nearest the train station. Outside the museum, two young women were playing modern music, ranging from folksy to rocky, on a traditional Japanese three-stringed instrument, the s(h)amisen. We stayed to watch them for several songs, and they were good. The instrument seems to be played like a cross between a slide guitar and a fret-less banjo. One one finger of her uppermost hand, the one near the neck of the instrument, the musician uses a ring on one finger to slide up and down the strings to control their length and both the note and how it quavers, while her other fingers pluck the strings. Down at the body end of the instrument, she also plucked strings. But rather than using a pick or a tough fingernail, she uses something that looked rather like a hairbrush, presumably with a pick on its underside. (Just looked it up: it's called a "plectrum".) Interesting fusion of old and new!

The museum provides an excellent reconstruction of the state of Tokyo at the turn of the last century, for the periods spanning the decades before and after the 1923 earthquake and subsequent fire that killed more than 100 thousand people and destroyed large parts of Tokyo. (The fires were worse than they otherwise might have been because the quake struck at lunch, when most people had kindled fires to cook their lunch.) We were met by a charming volunteer, who took us through the reconstruction, telling us many details of daily life of the time. (Including useful things you never hear about in most tours or histories, such as the toilet and kitchen locations, and the fact that the people of the time had developed a handy hand wash station outside the toilet: a bucket filled with water and suspended at head height, with a hole in the bottom stoppered by a small stick. Poke the stick upward, and water flows down from the bucket so you can wash your hands. Pull it down when you're done to close the hole and retain the remaining water.

The only real drawback of the museum is that our guide had to remain on the first floor to help other English visitors, and most of the upstairs exhibit space, which showed Tokyo's reconstruction during the next half century, was not translated.

From the museum, we wandered over to the lake that takes up a substantial portion of the southwestern end of Ueno Park. It's filled with lotus plants, which rise out of the water to nearly head height, and stretch several hundred feet to the far side of the lake, where there's a pleasant pagoda. At the southern end, there's enough open water for small fish, a few larger fish, and a fleet of turtles. We watched them for a while, as they've clearly learned to hang out in hope of handouts. There were at least two species of turtle, include the red-eared turtle familiar to most North Americans as a childhood pet. Some of these guys had been around quite a while; they were nearly a foot across.

For lunch, we went to a brewpub that made or sold a variety of Tokyo craft beers. Unfortunately, they were out of the imperial stout and "real ale" that we'd been hoping to try, but their YoHo Ale and summer orange ale (a typical red) were both good, and went well with a savoury bowl of soba noodles and chunks of roast duck.

From there, we headed over to the Ameyoko shopping arcade right next to Ueno station (indeed, it runs under the tracks in places), both to graze on anything that looked interesting and just see all the weird stuff people sold. Plus, people watching, as it was Sunday, and everyone plus their cousins was out for a stroll.. The Japanese don't seem to be big on eating out for breakfast, but are big on lunch and dinner in restaurants, particularly when combined with shopping, so the arcade was packed with people. There's an amazing amount of stuff for sale, from high-end clothing to cheap tat, not to mention a bewildering variety of food—ranging from the expected sweet shops and stalls selling skewers of fresh-cut fruit to fish markets. Interestingly, several shawarma restaurants, which were also selling hand-churned Turkish ice cream. We sampled some dry fruits, shared a green tea ice cream, and shared a chewy fish-shaped cookie (taiyaki) covered in caramelized sugar, possibly with some maple in it.

We lasted until about 3 before the noise and fuss wore us out, and headed back to the hotel to put our feet up and recuperate before dinner. After a bit of research, we found a tempura place about 20 minutes from the hotel that looked promising. We've been using Google Maps on Shoshanna's phone to navigate when a location wasn't perfectly clear, and though it got us to the okonomi place the previous night, it led us a bit astray tonight. We did eventually find tempura place, but the restaurant reviews neglected to mention that it only sold shrimp and prawn tempura—not at all my thing. But they did have a few other dishes, of which I selected a bowl of sweet pickles (cabbage, cucumber, turnip, daikon, and onion) and a big plate of eggplant sautéed in a thick black sauce similar to, but better than, hoisin sauce. Since they offered a new beer we hadn't seen before, we tried it: Asaha Extra Dry Black. Not my favourite black beer, but a nice change from the lagers et al. that we've been having most of the time.

We wandered home through a busy shopping area, still packed with people at 8 PM, though less crowded than earlier, with brief stops to explore a local supermarket, restock our dwindling chocolate supply, and get an ice cream for dessert.

Tomorrow is our last day in Japan, and we really only have the morning. We'll wander over to a local crafts museum, possibly check out a shopping area that specializes in cooking supplies, and maybe wander through Ueno park. Probably have one last meal before shouldering our packs and heading to the airport for our flight home. Stay tuned!

Continue to 24 September: Tokyo