We took the shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo; it’s about two and a half hours, and you pass Mount Fuji on the way. As travel goes, it was a nice interlude, relaxing on the train, most of our luggage already waiting for us at our hotel.
We stayed in Shinjuku, having settled on Hotel Gracery Shinjuku. Gracery is a hotel chain, and Shinjuku is where this particular one is. Since it’s attached to a shopping center, which is attached to a movie theater owned by the studio that makes the Godzilla movies, we were in “the Godzilla hotel”.
Previously, I saw Godzilla from the street when I came here with nieces. Now I could see Godzilla’s head close up, from the hotel lobby.
In fact, we stayed on the Godzilla floor (but not the Godzilla room). The floor’s hallway was decorated with photographic plates from the various movies, and the decor was Godzilla-themed: the throw, the coffee packages, the tissue paper dispensor.
We took a walk around the neighborhood and snacked in the Omoide Yokocho before getting some ramen. We saw the 3D cat and called it a night.
The next day was our one full day in Tokyo. We headed out to Tsukiji fish market and tried a variety of seafood. We had oysters shucked on demand, we had sushi and sashimi, and we had scallops seared with a torch and served on the shell. It was all very, very tasty.
We also went to the Hymarikyu Gardens, where a woman offered us a free tour. Skeptical at first, it turned out to be wonderful (we also felt less like marks after two British women joined us). Near as we could tell it’s just a program for people with free time to volunteer as guides and maybe practice another language.
At some point we went to Team Lab Planets, which I visited with previously; it was lovely to see that again with Anji-san.
The gardens are lovely – the Japanese truly know how to groom the landscape to look natural yet controlled – and the history fascinating. They trained ducks to act as living decoys to bring wild ducks into a blind for hunting.
On our final day, our flight out was in the evening, so we wandered through Ginza, stopping at the Nissan showcase and just vibing our way around. Eventually, we collected our luggage and headed to the airport.
This is where our last hiccup occurred. After clearing security and enjoying the Sakura lounge, we were waiting at the gate and saw the boarding time come and pass with no boarding. tension slowly built as one by one, passengers sought information but it was about twenty minutes before an announcement was made. Essentially, strong winds were predicted in New York for the time we would be arriving, and another half hour went by before the airline canceled the flight and gave everyone Visa gift cards to help offset hotel stays.
We’d all fly the next morning, which meant it wasn’t worthwhile to go far yet working out whether these cards would pay for anything was time-consuming. We just paid out of pocket for the airport hotel and went to bed at midnight only to get up at six to catch our flight.
The flight itself was fine*. We’d spent over two weeks in Japan and it was full.
(*) one result was that instead of having a day to repack for a work trip, I literally got home from Japan one day and flew to Washington state the next day, where I would spend a week and a half on the west coast.