Tokyo: Monday

Woke up early but at least this time I managed to sleep through the whole night. After leisurely getting ready and heading down to the attached cafe to eat--schoolpsychnerd and I had the sakura pancakes, which had a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a bit of cherry blossom flavor in it--some of us went back to the hotel to finish getting ready while schoolpsychnerd, xoDrVenture, and I went to Ikebukuro Station to do a bit of shopping. Except we forgot that this is Tokyo and there's a reason that when Gibson wrote about Tokyo in Neuromancer, he called the part of it where the story took place "Night City"--almost nothing is open before 10 a.m., and even the bakeries don't open until 7:30 or so. We went to Andersen and got a bit of bread and sat around until the rest of the stores opened, and then went to look. schoolpsychnerd found a shirt at a store called Ozz On, bought it, and around then everyone else showed up and we got on the train for Ueno.

Multiple people had suggested a lower-activity day after all the walking there was yesterday, so we went to the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Kōen. It's a Japan-focused art museum, though there was a Greek art exhibit that was hilariously advertised as "Land of the Immortals." There was a statue gallery that banned photography, but most of the rest of the museum was fine with pictures:

Look at this detailing!

The museum was roughly ten times as big as the part we saw, but after statues, clay works, Jōmon and Yayoi crafts, and Ainu and Ryūkyū art, it was after noon and everyone was getting really hungry and the sun had come out so we didn't want to do that much walking or eating at the food carts in the museum courtyard. We waited around for a bit while tastee_wheat looked at the general Asian art building, and then we headed over to a building in the south of the park and split up between a Japanese restaurant on the middle floor and a Chinese restaurant on the bottom. I went for Japanese food, and after a steak bentō I had to get dessert because it looked like this:

I'm tempted to make a stupid panda joke, but it's not bread.

After the museum we split up. tastee_wheat and a couple of the others headed off to Tokyo Tower to try and see the city from the top while tropicanaomega, schoolpsychnerd, and I headed back to the hotel, though we stopped on the way back to Ozz On to get a skirt that matched schoolpsychnerd's new top. They ended up going out again before dinner, to a bunny cafe called Usabibi and met Bibi, Mikan, and Purin the rabbits. I tried to read for a bit, but pretty soon I got extremely tired and ended up napping for a bit, and again after schoolpsychnerd came back. At 6 p.m., I asked for three more minutes of sleep, and after that the two of us and aaron.hosek headed out to meet one of schoolpsychnerd's old friends, who neither of us had seen since we got married.

We met up in Shinjuku outside a sukiyaki restaurant, and after schoolpsychnerd glomped her friend, we took the elevator up. Unfortunately, without a reservation the earliest they could fit us in was 8:30, so we left and went up to the top floor and another restaurant called Nanairo Temariuta, which had giant wicker balls built around tables in the center of the main dining space, all of which were occupied (手毬 is a traditional handball game). Instead they stuck us in the back room with the other group of gaijin, but that's the only (minor) complaint I had. It was great food otherwise, through the pictures were a little deceiving and we ordered way more food than we had the stomachs to eat. Two pots of nabe was probably one two many, though in our defense, the waitress did say each one feeds two people. Two sumo wrestlers, maybe.

schoolpsychnerd's friend had to run to catch a show at the robot restaurant, but we didn't leave Shinjuku quite yet. We wanted check out the Square Enix cafe first, so after briefly checking out the lights of Shinjuku:

Night City.

...we followed google maps and two streets over, the crowds and lights pretty much vanished. We walked through darkened streets, deserted by almost everyone but a few people going about their business, and in maybe ten minutes of walking we arrived at the weird dome of Artnia, the Square-Enix cafe.

Well, sort of cafe, sort of bar, sort of gift shop. When we got there it was almost closing time and they didn't seem to have a menu out at all, so we looked at the gifts. Most of it was Dragon Quest oriented in honor of DQ's thirtieth anniversary, but there was a room in the back done up for Final Fantasy:

"The world is veiled in darkness.
The wind stops, the sea is wild, and the earth begins to rot."

Not visible here is the way that the water appeared to be moving up into the ceiling.

schoolpsychnerd bought a keychain because she felt bad looking without buying anything, and then we made our way back to the train station and headed back to Ikebukuro. A quick poll of our friends determined that nearly everyone was ready for bed, except for one unfortunate who had taken a five-hour nap, so we went back to the room and went to sleep. I didn't even get halfway through writing this before I fell asleep, and so I post it now.

Steps taken: 15565

Himeji and Hiroshima: Tuesday

Woke up early again, though not as early as schoolpsychnerd, who woke up in a panic at 1 a.m. worrying that she had somehow screwed up the hotel reservations and then couldn't get back to sleep. I woke up at 5:30 when she came back in from her morning run and then likewise couldn't get back to sleep, so after trying a failing for a while, I got up and met the others at breakfast. After toast and a bit of tropicanaomega's leftover chicken curry, everyone went back to their rooms to pack up and get ready for the trip to Himeji to see the castle.

We got a later start than I liked and went the slightly longer way around the Yamanote Line to stick aaron.hosek, who was getting off at Shibuya in preparation for going on to Matsumoto and walking through the mountains there. When we did get to Tokyo Station and the Shinkansen stop, we took the second train out west because it went straight through to Himeji rather than requiring us to change trains in Shin-Ōsaka, so we waited for a bit, bought train station bentō, and boarded the 11:03 for Okayama.

Shinkanselfie.

Riding the Shinkansen again reminds me how much of an embarrassing pile of trash every single American attempt at mass transit is. It's true that Amtrak was designed to kill passenger rail, but even with all its failures it's still running because mass transit is part of a civilized society and it's something that Japan has absolutely got down. The average Shinkansen arrives within six seconds of the posted time and is roomier, and far more pleasant to ride than an airplane, so it's all we took for intra-country travel when we lived in Japan.

Also, Japan is clearly gearing up for the olympics, or perhaps they realized that Malaysia is very close, majority Muslim, and has 500 million people. I doubt I could find kosher food anywhere in Japan, but I found a halal bentō for the train ride:

"Kebab Bentō." Super good.

The ride from Tokyo to Himeji is almost three hours long, and while there are a few interesting views along the way, large portions of it take place in tunnels because Japan is full of mountains. I spent the time listening to podcasts and catching up on my RSS feeds while schoolpsychnerd tried to sleep, and around 2:45, we arrived at Himeji.

The weather in Himeji was typical Japanese summer--33°C, why, how do people live like this--but we were able to walk on the shady side of the street on the road to the castle and once inside the walls, it was actually pretty cool. The baileys were shaded with enough windows that there was almost always a cool breeze blowing through, and the main problem became that we hadn't actually officially stopped for lunch coupled with climbing a bunch of stairs and walking through wooden halls, as well as the occasional foray out into the sun and the heat.

Autocorrect almost wrote "the sauna and the heat" there, which is pretty accurate.

The last time I was here, Himeji-jō was under renovation, but this time the main keep was finished and the renovations had moved on to one of the walls not that far from the front gate, well out of the way of the view from the castle keep or most of the outbuildings. And what a view:

Also called 白鷺城, "white heron castle."

Matsue-jō, the other intact castle I've been to, has more interesting inside, with the armor displays and full storerooms and so on, while Himeji is mostly empty rooms with the occasional small display. Despite that, I like Himeji-jō better because it's more awe-inspiring. From seeing it when you exit the train station at the end of the road ahead, to climbing up all the wooden stairs and through the walls, to the way the darkened interior halls look and smell, it has a grandeur that Matsue-jō lacks.

Hiroshima-jō looks impressive from the outside, but it's a replica built of concrete, for obvious reasons.

It took a little over an hour to see the castle, and afterwards we stopped in the gift shop where I bought a sake cup to supplement our collection, some of ours having broken over the years. It was there that we learned the real name for the round mascot of Himeji that we've been calling Himeji-tan: しろまるひめ (shiromaruhime, "white round princess"). Then we went back outside the castle and down the street, stopping briefly, at a shop for schoolpsychnerd, another friend, and I to get ほうじ茶 (hōjicha, "barley tea") soft serve ice cream. It was amazingly tasty, though of course, the heat may have had something to do with that.

Then we bought Shinkansen tickets with our JR Rail Passes and got on a bullet train ten minutes later. I love Japan's transit system.

I forgot how many tunnels there are close to Hiroshima, so I mostly just read during the trip since the Internet was constantly cutting out. And then we arrived.

ただいま。

It was really like...coming home, when I stepped out of the station and saw the train cars, and walked down Aioi-dōri and saw all the stores I remembered and the skyline. Hondōri with Parco at the end, looking down Chūōdōri and remembering Tōkasans past... I'm not from here, and at this point I've spent longer in Chicago than I did in Chiyoda, but even so, this almost feels more like home to me.

We walked from the train station to Hotel Active, our old haunt, and checked in. Yumi-san isn't working here anymore, or at least wasn't working today, though I did recognize one of the staff who checked our friends in. He didn't seem to recognize us, though, and we had never really talked with him before so I didn't bother to do so now. All the reservations checked out okay, and after we paid and dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we reassembled in the lobby for dinner. I had suggested kaitenzushi, specifically Nonta-sushi, over in the Pacela building next to the bus terminal. One person wasn't too interested in fish and headed off to find different food, but the rest of us made the trek only to find that it was near closing time and there wasn't actually any sushi on the conveyor. We ordered by hand, though, and people seemed to enjoy the food. I talked up fatty tuna a bunch and that came through for me, at least!

After that, we went down into Shareo and over to Stick Sweets for dessert, where I think I surprised the shop attendant. She was cleaning and I came in and asked if they were still open, and she kind of nervously nodded, and asked if we wanted to eat in. I asked if it was okay and she said yes, but I'm not sure if it was just Japanese customer service or not...

Regardless, we ate our sweets (gateau chocolate and strawberry mousse for me!), and headed back. schoolpsychnerd and I split off about halfway through to go check out if one of the bars we liked was still there while the others went back to the hotel, and on the way we found a fooddrink truck:

Sponsored by Bacardi. All mojitos, all the time.

The bar we remembered did exist and was open, but we were pretty tired, sore, and sweaty, so we bought mojitos and drank them while reminiscing about days gone by as we watched the crowds on Hondōri. Then, tired, sore, and sweaty, we went back to the hotel.

Steps taken: 18856