Japan 2017: 24 September: Tokyo

Return to 23 September: Kawaguchi to Tokyo

Last day in Japan will be spent in Tokyo, basically stretching our legs before an endless flight home.

One last buffet breakfast at the hotel, and it was as good as the previous day, plus there were a few new things (fried noodles, roasted rather than fried potatoes). Then back up to the room for near-final packing. "Near final" in this case meaning that we were going to be hauling a ton of baggage later in the day, and it was both sunny and hot, so by the time I got to Haneda Airport, I figured I'd be swimming in sweat, and would want to change into new clothing. Also, some fragile stuff that was fine to leave in the big backpacks while we were walking to and between trains would not survive Air Canada's baggage handlers.

We left our bags with the hotel's left-luggage people, then walked about 45 minutes to the Asakuse Taito City traditional crafts museum. (It would have taken half that time if we just walked, but we were irresistibly pulled into a bunch of kitchen supply stores and other distractions. Reminded me of my undergraduate days, when I used to hit the bargain Chinese import shops for cups and plates, and so on, only with much higher quality. It would be a lot of fun equipping an apartment from these stores. Interestingly, the shops seemed to cluster in mini-districts: for example, half a dozen kitchen stores side by side, followed by three knife stores, followed by a handful of slipper stores, and so on. No idea whether they're cooperatively owned or managed so that they don't compete or whether there's some complex etiquette of coexistence that prevents knife duels on the sidewalk.

The crafts museum was more a showroom than a museum, but showed off many beautiful crafts that Japan is known for—lacquerware, ceramics, fabrics—and some perhaps that it's not known for, such as worked leather that looked like carved wood, including a purse that looked sufficiently like a log that it even had annual growth rings on its two ends and a "carved" leather owl. No volunteer guides, only two small floors, and minimal English signage, but they did have a looped movie that showed some of the techniques. Worth the walk, particularly if you're in Asakuse District, as a low-pressure museum for our final day.

From the museum, we headed off to the Sumida River and Tokyo Sky Tree, which is like their version of Toronto's CN tower. The river is thoroughly domesticated, with concrete banks and no wildlife, and the Sky Tree is interesting but not worth much time, so we quickly turned back inshore. As we were passing through one of the older temple districts, a trio of young Japanese (one woman and a man) bearing a movie camera asked if they could interview us. We were in no hurry, and agreed. The questions were completely off the wall (about dental hygiene and whether we'd ever had hangovers, and what herbal or other medicines we took to cure the situation). But they were polite and enthusiastic, so why not? When they were done, they asked us to sign a typical model release form—for NTV, which (if memory serves) is Japan's national TV network. No idea what this was about, other than that it might be one of those "weird things those weird foreigners do" TV shows.

It was a hot and thirsty day, so we went in search of beer. We found two new ones—in one of those ubiquitous vending machines this time—and tried them out when we got back to the hotel lobby. The first, Yebisu Premium Black, was a delicious black ale. The second beer was from the Sapporo company, and that was the only English on the can. But from the autumn leaves in the image and the year 2017 prominently displayed beside them, it seems likely it was an Oktoberfest ale. Not as good as the Yebisu, but still tasty and reinvigorating on a hot day. All the mass-market beers from Japanese brewers are good, particularly as a restorative on hot days, but they're starting to produce some more interesting offerings that we look forward to sampling next time. And thus far, I've liked the Yebisu beers best.

We headed back to Haneda Airport on the relentlessly efficient Japan Rail, repacked our bags to move the breakable into our carry-on luggage, and then I went to change into some dry clothes. We'd hoped to rebook to an earlier flight from Toronto to Montreal, but after 45 minutes waiting in line to see an agent and check our bags, the agent told us she couldn't change our tickets. It might have gone faster if instead of having 2 ticket agents and 4 agents working together to reposition the lane markers leading to the counter, they'd reversed that ratio. We had plenty of time before our flight, so it was more irritating than problematic.

We figured it would be a while before Air Canada fed us, so we stopped for a last Japanese meal before boarding. More on the fast food side of the quality scale than most places we'd eaten, but acceptable for airport food. I had beef curry with rice, and it was nicely spiced, though oversalted; Shoshanna had noodles with pork and shrimp, though the shrimp were on the homeopathic side in terms of size and quantity. If there are "jumbo shrimp", then these were "microshrimp", and they were probably dried rather than fresh.

And so (probably) ends our Japan blog, as we're writing this in Toronto Airport, waiting for the last leg of our flight home. I might have time for some musings in a couple days once I've gotten caught up on accumulated responsibilities—or earlier if I need an excuse to avoid those responsibilities.

Thanks for sticking with us thus far!

Continue to 25 September: going home