Tokyo

Day 12 – Tokyo

Monday, 16 April 2012

We both slept well with our mattress and futon on the floor, down-filled pillows and quilt and so quiet!

Our apartment is located in Oshiage where the new “sky tree” has been built. The train station is being rebadged and a department store is also being built at the station. Unfortunately the tower won’t open until May but there are already lots of people taking photos from different parts of the city. It has become a new Tokyo icon.

This morning our most important task was to see if we could secure a sleeper room on the Twilight Express from Sapporo to Osaka. So we bought an all day excursion ticket for the metro at a cost of 1000 yen each and navigated our way to Ueno station across a couple of different lines to the JR ticket office. We were in luck. At first it looked like only single rooms were avaialble but with the help of the supervisor, a double room was found. These overnight bookings must not be common as the two women certainly seemed to get a kick out of making the booking for us.

We were hoping to visit some museums in the Ueno park area but didn’t realise they are closed on Mondays.

So, headed off to Ginza instead and home of designer shopping. Last time we were in Ginza we bought Kathryn pearls for her graduation at the Mikimoto store and I bought a wallet at one of the department stores. Our favourite experience though is walking through the department store food halls. These are like the David Jones food hall but spanning two floors and so much more to see. There are beautiful displays of fresh fruits and vegetables, breads, meats, fish and ready-to-eat meals that you buy by weight. The sweet counters are quite extensive and exquisitely made. Not many free samples though!

Our luck was holding and I found two lovely Japanese handbags on special on the 6th floor of the Mitsukushi department store, one red and one black.

We had lunch in a small Ginza cafe frequented by city workers. They have a quick turnover and very reasonably priced food – we both ate for under 1,000 yen. It was lovely to revisit Ginza with its tree lined streets and wide boulevards!

Our next destination was Nipporri which is known as “textile town” as there are over 80 shops specialising in fabrics. At the station we looked at a street map trying to work out which way we needed to exit. A Japanese lady who looked as if she knew materials as she was wearing a lovely patchwork shawl, was also looking at the same street map. So boldly, I asked her about fabric street. Unfortunately we couldn’t make ourselves understood so we went off in one direction and she in another. When we came to the cemetery we knew we had come the wrong way and retraced our foot steps. The same Japanese lady was there, almost as if she had come looking for us, saying “fabric street.” She ended up showing us where the street was, asked me what I wanted to buy and took me to a store that sold Japanese cotton fabrics.

It was very satisfying buying Japanese quilting fabrics by the metre for a future quilt but Anthony wasn’t feeling well so couldn’t spend the time looking that I would have liked.

We did have a short walk to the other side of Nippori. It was very traditional with narrow streets and small shops, at one of which we bought a bunch of asparagus for dinner.

Back to the apartment just after dark for some home cooked dinner, a bath and sleep. How will all our sourvenirs fit into the bags?

	Oshiage Sky tree [Map]		Food hall displays [Map]
	Matsukoshi Department store Ginza [Map]		Lunch at Ginza cafe [Map]
	Anthony’s lunch at Ginza cafe [Map]		Outside of cafe [Map]
	Japanese cotton fabrics [Map]		Nippori textile town [Map]
	Other side of Nipporri [Map]		Traditional street scene Nipporri [Map]
	Older style shop front Nipporri [Map]