Flashing past Fuji

Wednesday 14th April

Our intention this morning was to visit the Science Museum in Hamamatsu. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was closed. There was a sign up at the door, but I couldn't read any of it except something about 'day'. My guess is that it said they are closed on Wednesdays. Plan B was to visit the Museum of Musical Instruments but guess what! It was closed! I think it's just me. When I visited Paris in my teens, we got to The Louvre and it was closed! They must see me coming. Anyway, we decided that we were meant to head for Tokyo so we went to the station just in time to catch the shinkansen. We knew that the train would pass Mt Fuji on the way to Tokyo so we hoped for a seat on the left side of the train, but they were all taken. The train made a stop at a station before we passed Mt Fuji and several passengers got off, so John made a dash for their vacated seats and we were then in prime viewing position. I was watching the mountains as we passed and wondering 'is that Mt Fuji?' every time one was a little taller than its mates, and then all of a sudden, Mt Fuji came into view. What an amazing sight! It's huge compared to the surrounding mountains - much bigger than I had realized. Its top was covered in snow and it had a collar of clouds, just like in the travel brochures. It really was a stunning sight and we were very fortunate because yesterday was very overcast and misty, while today was quite clear. We took photos as fast as the shutter would allow and a couple of them were not too bad.

Do you like my drink? I don't know what they feed the cows here, but the drink is really nice. It's a light fizzy lemon drink.

We arrived in Tokyo Station and scouted around for a JR railway map and a subway map, left our packs in a coin locker and found our way out of the station (easier said than done!).

We were amused by this sign. Perhaps it means 'no gingerbread men allowed in the lockers', but we're not sure. It could also have meant 'don't get in the locker' or 'don't keep your children in a locker'.

The first thing we noticed was the number of smart young 'corporate' types, both men and women, in black suits (skirt suits for the women). Almost every one of the women was using her mobile phone, either for talking or looking at something on the screen. In other places we had seen girls riding their bicycles while talking or texting on the mobile phones. They seem to have developed an extra sense that stops them from crashing into light poles or pedestrians.

We walked down to the Imperial Palace, ogling the forest of buildings along the way. On an earlier visit, John had found the buildings to be dull, colourless and boring, but there are now many innovative and creatively designed buildings in the city. We went for a stroll around the Palace's East Gardens until our feet decided that they'd had enough.

We plodded back to the station, collected our packs and checked into the hotel. On the way back we saw a couple of interesting things. The first was a single-seater van (great idea for Japan) and the other was an orange metal chappie directing the traffic.

We are aware that we have to make the most of our time, but time to 'flop' is a necessity sometimes. We were thinking of going to Shinjuku for dinner, which would have involved a subway ride, with a change of trains, across the city. We came to the conclusion that we didn't have the energy, so we went to an Indian restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. It sounded really odd to hear an Indian man calling the standard Japanese 'Irrashaimase!' greeting to customers who walked into the shop. He spoke fluent Japanese, and spoke reasonable English to us, so he had at least three languages - and made a great curry! John had the dilemma, once the curry made his nose run, of whether to do as the Japanese do (sniff) or to blow his nose and appear rude. He managed to deal with it with discretion. Probably not a good idea to eat curry in Japan unless you're OK with sniffing!

We followed our nice dinner with a soft-serve ice cream from the convenience store. Fortunately, we didn't find any eel livers in any of our food tonight. Maybe we should have eaten the eel livers last night to give us the strength to explore Tokyo tomorrow!