Sunday, June 5, 2011

Tokyo Trip, Day 1


A few months ago I went to see my middle sister and her husband in Tokyo for the weekend. She was visiting and I’m only a few hours away by train so it worked out well. I rode out after work to meet them at Starbucks in Kamakura, Japan. True, I’d already visited there nearly a year before but that was at someone else’s planning and it’s just such a lovely place I had no problem visiting there again. Since it was the beginning of December and rather chilly we decided not to go to the beach there. They had visited the main temple while they waited for me to get done with work so we decided to go to eat first. My sister, B, had a guide book of the best places to visit in Japan that she borrowed from the place they had been staying so she looked in there and found a great Japanese curry place known for its cheesy chicken curry. It was only a few blocks away from the Starbucks so we walked it and it wasn’t long before both me and my brother-in-law, G, were wondering aloud about her map reading skills. She took it as the mostly joking that it was and we made it to the restaurant to eat their amazing curry. She ordered the cheesy chicken curry, G ordered the beef curry, and I decided to be exotic and try the scallop curry. Yeah, my mistake. The plates came out with a pile of rice next to a gravy bowl of curry so it was easy to try each other’s sauce on our rice. I must admit that while the scallop curry wasn’t amazing, it wasn’t horrible and B and G’s food was amazing. I will definitely have to go back there for more than a little taste of the good curry. They served our tea in a way I hadn’t seen before which intrigued me. They had a glass bottom with one of those round candles that you can pick up at almost any home decoration place in the States lit and they put the hot tea on top in a glass teapot. The effect was to keep the tea hot and you can see the color of the tea with the fire reflected through the tea.
After we had eaten we got some ice cream and decided to go to Hase which was two train stations over and was known for a number of temples. We found it, despite my bad directions, and got to the temple B really wanted to see seven minutes after it had closed. Supposedly the temple was known for hundreds of statues and its gorgeous garden so we stood looking through the slits in the fence for a few minutes before B sadly agreed to move on and we walked a few blocks to the Great Buddha. This was another place I had gone already but it was as a quick day trip to prove I could navigate the train system and I had been on a time limit so it was nice to slowly wander the grounds at night and take night pictures. Even though it was after dark, B wanted us to go for a multi-mile hike from one part of the city to the other but G and I managed to talk her out of it. Much as I love the outdoors and walking at night I wasn’t willing to go on a hiking path that likely didn’t have many lights. Besides, I was kind of tired and still had my backpack on with all my stuff for the weekend. Unfortunately her way of compromising was to walk back to the other train station by a main road. Yeah, that took another hour but gave us more time to talk.
We got on the train and managed to find seats. I noticed and tried to hide that I was falling asleep in the hot train talking to them. I managed to stay awake through the trip and made it to the train station we got off. Unfortunately the station was Ikeburo Station, one of the busiest train stations in Tokyo, especially after dark. I hate crowds and tried to keep close to B and G as they led me where we needed to go before I hyperventilated. I got out on the street and calmed myself down while we walked to the hostel they had gotten rooms in. Yep, I can now say I’ve slept in a hostel. Now, when you think of a hostel you are probably like me and think of everyone sleeping in one room and sharing a single bathroom. Well, that may have been another floor but they got a three person room so the three of us shared a room and everyone in the floor shared two shower stalls, a female bathroom, and a male bathroom. It really was rather cool. Being in Japan we slept on the floor on separate mats maybe two inches thick under blankets about an inch and a half. The blankets and mats were wrapped snuggly in sheets so they were easy to launder and we were given small towels to use and return so they could launder and replace if needed. The towels, though not bigger than a hand towel, dried me all the way off, even with my long hair, and the beds were surprisingly comfortable.
By now it had been many hours since the curry meal so we tried a nearby restaurant that was part of a chain similar to Denny’s in the States. However, it was closed so I introduced them to the cheap way travelers eat in Japan: convenience stores. We found a 7/11 or the like and picked up some food (I picked up a rice cake with meat inside and a large meat dumpling, B picked up something she thought was interesting, and G picked up a plate of spaghetti they heated behind the counter for him) and picked up a few cans from the local liquor store since the convenience store didn’t have a very good selection. We took our meal and ate in the lobby of the hostel we were staying at. I’ve never understood the fun of sitting at a bar drinking and talking all night but we finally headed up to bed about midnight. I don’t know if the alcohol mattered much since none of us were even tipsy going upstairs but it sure was fun to just sit and talk to them for a few hours, even if we did need to get up late to accommodate the late night. It was the weekend and sleeping in is what the weekend is for.

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