Cycling in Japan 2016 - a day in Tokyo and then the long trip home

9 Sep - in Tokyo

Today was a full day sucking the marrow of Tokyo.  Well, given it is a heaving metropolis with 35 million people (I googled that), I seriously doubted any marrow sucking would even make a dent.  And I was right.  But it was a good taste of what Tokyo has available for any tourist.

First up, breakfast.  And I was starting to crave Weetbix more and more.  Hahah.  But Tokyo is no slouch in the fine breakfast department and everything tastes good.  So, after sustaining ourselves we caught a train to Shibuya.

Shibuya is famous for its frantic pace and massive amount of traffic and pedestrians.  But we stood on the corner of one of the intersections for about 15 minutes trying to figure out where we were and where we wanted to go and really, it wasn't that busy.

We did find the famous crossing, and crossed it.  And found the Starbucks Dai suggested that had a good view over the crossing.

The famous crossing at Shibuya.  Pretty much devoid of any traffic except us.  

My iced coffee while watching Shibuya

After sustaining myself once more, we headed off towards the chic shopping area of Tokyo.  Because we thought we'd fit right in.  Hahahah.  In our bike shorts and all.

We went past a pie shop selling - wait for it - strawberry and cheese pie.  Which I thought was some sort of abomination (or a typo) but I just read a book last night where the main character ordered an apple pie with cheese on top grilled a bit.  What the ...?  Weirdos.

Nothing was open.  Seems shops open around 10 or 11 am.  Way too early for us intrepid kiwis.  So we jumped back on the train and went to Akihabara to check out the anime for Toby.

Finally found some Mario characters I recognised

I think I broke Col.  And damaged Iona.  And I may have taken some impact too.  The anime was overwhelming.  After dragging Iona and Col into a shop that had 7 floors of anime, we all resembled glazed zombies.

It was time for a break.  We found a great wee restaurant and we gobbled down some ramen noodles.

They have an information shop entirely devoted to exploring anime 

The senses were assaulted by anime

Overwhelmed tourists in the multi floor anime shop we chose at random.

We also discovered the palace.  I think.  Spent some time recovering in a garden with really nice seats and fountains.  And then wandered around the moat of the palace.  If it was the palace.

Tom foolery by the cooling fountain

Old and new juxtaposition - at least that was the effect I was aiming for

Some random display had a photo of Dunedin's railway station.  Wow!  Not sure what - it was all in Japanese.

Best lemon tart ever.  I know who would have liked that.

Something cute.  Iona wonders if it is for a bank, or a contraceptive ad campaign.  Ummmmmm - should I be worried?

We headed back to the hotel to recover and then went out to find dinner.  More sushi.  Except we spent ages trying to find the same sushi place we had the night before.  But once found, mmmmmmm.  Yum!




 10 Sep - Leaving Tokyo.

Goodness - up super early and sneaking out at the crack of dawn discarding our house slippers in favour of our travelling shoes.  Off home already.  None of us wanted to leave.  We could have added a few more weeks easily.

We caught the local train at 6.45am.  Groan.  And then changed to an express train to the airport.  Which took 1.5 hours to travel through Tokyo at breakneck speed.  Tokyo is huge.

Express train to Narita airport

Caught the  plane and had an easy flight to Hong Kong.  Sad to leave japan.  One of the easiest holidays I have ever had.  Nothing went wrong.  The people were amazing.  Wonderful holiday.  Can't recommend the bike tour highly enough.  Cycling Japan.  Go find a trip that suits you and book it in!

We had 6 hours in Hong Kong airport and switched money to HK dollars and bought food all day.  Drank any iced coffee I could find.  Iona even bought a GoPro.  Wow.  The next holiday will be a social media frenzy with that!

The long flight back to Auckland was fine.  Slept mostly.  Watched a movie or two.  And generally looked forward to getting to my own bed at this point.  Touched down and navigated customs quickly and walked around to domestic.  Iona and Col were changed to a later flight due to the late arrival of our plane.  So I got to eat lunch with them.

11 Sep - Home at 5pm.  Amazed and astonished at how great the house was and how well groomed and well fed and looked after Mike and Toby were.

And that describes our Japan cycling adventure.  Things haven't really been exaggerated.  I may have missed things though.  All up - a fantastic holiday and I can't wait to go back.

Thanks for the trip, Mike and Toby.  And thanks to Iona and Col for organising it and allowing me to tag along on your coattails.