Saturday, November 11, 2017; Yokohama to Tokyo

Saturday, November 11, 2017; Yokohama to Tokyo moving day

We awoke to a beautiful sunrise over Yokohama Bay.  The Yokohama Bay Hotel was a wonderful facility (huge room, comfortable beds, great view, great bathroom with soaking tub), but when we went down for breakfast, we were disappointed by the breakfast buffet.  It was included in the price for the room, but they had only limp soggy British “Bacon” and soggy ham to go with very runny scrambled eggs.  Interestingly, there was spaghetti with marinara sauce and sautéed yo-choy and cabbage.  The only potatoes were some soggy French fries.  No hash browns or English muffins.  There was plain white bread for toast, and some rolls and pastries.  The rolls were rock hard and inedible, but the pastries were OK.  The fruit salad looked very sad and the melons weren’t sweet.  They did have an omelet station.  It was interesting to see the Japanese chef make the omelet using chopsticks, but my omelet was only partially cooked, so raw egg ran out from the center onto my plate.  Not so appetizing.  The coffee was pretty bad (Maxwell house or Folgers instant quality).  I guess you could say we have been spoiled by the food that Princess had been serving us over the last 2 weeks.  Janet ended up getting some cereal and I scooped up some dried apricots and banana chips to round out our breakfast.  

Our goal for today was to get to Tokyo via train, and we managed to do this with our 2 small and 1 large suitcase.  Google Maps lead us to the wrong platform initially, so we ended up having to make a U-Turn at Chinatown before heading the right direction towards Tokyo.  Perhaps it was a good thing we ended up the wrong way to Chinatown because although there were a lot of people on the train, we were able to get our luggage and eventually find seats at the back of the car so our luggage was braced against the door to the next car.  By the time we were at Yokohama station, the car was jammed full of people-elbow to elbow, and it remained that way all the way into Tokyo.  It took an hour on the train and a 15 minute walk to get to our new hotel, the Villa Fontaine Hotel Shiodome.  

We dropped off our suitcases with the hotel’s front desk, and then headed off to see the Tsukiji Market and Ginza district.  These were each within a 20-30 minute walk, and the weather remained perfect for walking (60’s with partly sunny skies).  

The Tsukiji Market was a huge affair with many small restaurants amongst stalls selling fresh fish, tourist items, sushi and other items.  There was a huge crowd there, so getting through the narrow streets was difficult.  After a while, it all starts to look and sound the same, so we finally ended up in a larger restaurant with English speaking staff, English menus and which also accepted credit cards.  Janet had a bowl of Udon noodle soup, while Ben had the daily special, which was a bowl of seasoned rice with tuna sashimi, sea urchin roe, and salmon roe. It also came with a bowl of Miso soup.  The food was quite good and it included all the hot tea you could drink, and a place to sit and eat. Many of the stalls in the market have nowhere for you to eat.  This also gave our feet a needed rest.  The Tsukiji Market is where tuna are brought in and placed on auction for big bucks.  These auctions take place very early (5:30AM) and only the first 120 tourists are permitted to observe the auctions.  You have to arrive before 2:30AM to register to observe the auction.  60 are allowed to observe the first auction at 5:30AM and another 60 are allowed to observe the second auction at 7:00AM.  You may have seen these auctions on TV.  We didn’t see that part of the market, but saw the unusual 3 wheeled carts that they use to move materials around the market in. 

Rested and refueled, we crossed the street to visit the Tsukiji-Hongwanji Buddhist temple, where we conveniently found bathrooms.  There seem to be none in the Tsukiji Market.  

From there, we walked to the Kabukiza Theatre, the largest Kabuki theatre in Japan.  Seats ranged from $176 for box seats for a full 3 act show, to $13.50 for standing room on the 4th balcony at the very back of the theatre for a single act. 

We then walked down the main Ginza shopping district, which becomes a large pedestrian shopping mall.  We saw a wedding party getting its pictures taken in front of a boarded up storefront.  Not sure why they picked that particular location for their wedding pictures.  

As we walked back to our hotel, we noticed an odd looking sculpture erupting from the side of a building and went to take a closer look. It was the Hayao Miyazaki’s Nippon Television big clock. It looked like a giant mechanical clock and fortunately for us, it was just 5 minutes before it was scheduled to do it’s thing at 3:00PM.  Sure enough, as the hour approached, the sculpture whirred into life with robotic dancers, doors, windows and elevators actuating in tune to music, and at one point, a cuckoo clock emerged from inside a clawed foot.  That was certainly a random and interesting sight. 

We got checked into our room, which was not nearly as nice as the Yokohama Bay Hotel.  The room appears quite dark, and was significantly smaller.  There was a small window it’s a view overlooking Hamariku Gardens and the Sumida river. We did appreciate being able to kick off our shoes and take a nap to recover from our morning explorations.  

Dark fell at 5:00PM and the city lights came on.  We walked back to the Ginza to a Tempura restaurant called Tsunahachi, located on the 8th floor of the Matsuya Department store.  The food was very good, but expensive.  They had set menu options that were around $31 per person.  We ended up splitting a $57 option.  Interestingly, they deep fried the body portion of the shrimp containing the legs and claws with the tail, and it was so crispy that you could eat it easily.  Janet had to ask to be sure it was supposed to be eaten. They had an English menu and accepted Visa credit cards.  They even had a cheat sheet for non-Japanese showing  what was in all the little dishes on the table (various flavored salts, grated radish, dipping sauce) and the proper order for use of the various sized plates (pick up tempura, dip in sauce with grated radish in the medium sized dish, then dip into flavored salts in the large dish, then eat it.  The tempura also came with several small side dishes of pickled vegetables, jellyfish salad, miso and gazpacho.  

After dinner we descended the escalators of Matsuya’s department store and marveled at some very expensive (>$8000) kimonos, and a lot of other high end housewares, including hand forged knives and tools.  From the Ginza, we walked to Yakitori Alley, which is a long row of restaurants nestled under the Tokaido Bullet Train tracks.  We stopped at one restaurant and watched their noodle chef roll out a huge ball of dough into 1mm soba noodles. There was a lot of manual labor involved, but the end product looked delicious.  It sure gave us a greater appreciation for a good bowl of soba noodles. 

The wind had picked up and we did need our coats for the walk back to our hotel.  We have a half day guided tour arranged by Audley Travel tomorrow from 9:00AM to 1:00PM.  We will be traveling by public transit with our PASMO cards which we are now experienced in using.