It's Saturday, and liked it or not, it's time to say bye Kyoto. Our train was around noon, so we went out to Nene-no-zaka for an early morning walk. We really liked it early in the morning, quiet and fresh (fill in later when we find better adjectives). We revisited Kiyomizu temple to have one more look at the view of Kyoto.
Then it's checkout time and we're back at Kyoto station. We got about a little more than an hour of free time so we plopped down at Cafe du Monde for a blended ice coffee and a cafe au lait, and enjoyed the hustle bustle of the crowd and listened to a school band performing nearby on a stadium-like platform. Nice.
|
We arrived at Tokyo at 3pm, and went to find a coin locker for our luggage. In the undergound of Tokyo station near the shinkansen ticket area was a Coin locker town with rows and rows of lockers, but because it's a Saturday, the station was flooded with people out shopping and they all used lockers too. Boy was it hard to find one not in use. Fortunately after 5 minutes my wife ran into someone removing their stuff from a locker that also fitted our luggage. Phew.
With the luggage out of the way, we looked for a way to get to Odaiba.
|
Odaiba had several things that qualified it into our list: a waterfront, the Rainbow Bridge, shopping, and good food.
Tokyo, though bordering the sea, surprisingly was not much of a port city, unlike San Francisco or Vancouver. So when you want to catch the ocean breeze or want to go to the "waterfront", Odaiba is where you go. It's a pretty new development area too (developed in the 1990s), and not too convenient to get to, as the only practical way to get to it is over the Rainbow Bridge either by car or the private Yurikamome line.
From Tokyo station we took JR south to Shimbashi station, then follow the sign for a long walk to the Yurikamome line start point. The price varied depending on how far you wanted to go. There were all-day pass too, which was discounted if you bouht them after 5pm I think. Our plan was simple: to Odaiba and back. So we bought a round-trip ticket and the machine spit out a set of 2 single-use tickets, each for a one-way ride.
The Yurikamome monorail train was all automated (unmanned), and the cars had big windows all around, affording everyone a good view as they rode the Rainbow Bridge lower deck over Tokyo Harbor over to Odaiba.
We liked the place immediately as soon as we got out of Odaiba station. The area was covered by an expansive boardwalk called the Decks, going all the way from the Aqua City shopping center, hugging the beach all the way to the so-called Tokyo Beach. This makes for a very nice stroll in the afternoon, offering nice panorama view of Tokyo harbor with a lot of tour boat activities, anchored by the fantastic view of Rainbow Bridge. Shopping was never far away, the same with great food. With such romantic view, it's no wonder the beach was very popular with couples.
We strolled the boardwalk, then did a bit of beachcombing, stopping now and then to sit on the rocks taking in the afternoon view. Then it's shopping time in Aqua City! We had a great time in there.
|
Around 5pm we went up to 5th floor to check out the Ramen Theme Park (Ramen Kokugikan), named after a sumo's indoor arena in Tokyo. In a 6-month rotation, 6 different restaurants from all over Japan would stage their shops in an Edo-era atmosphere and hawked their cooking to diners. It's a one-stop place to enjoy the rich taste of various Ramens. When we were there, the 6 shops hailed from Tokyo (2 restaurants) and Niigata in Honshu (central Japan), Tokushima and Hakata in the south (Kyushu respectively), and Sapporo to the north. Spending a while perusing the posters displayed prominently along the corridor leading into the Theme Park, we still had a hard time deciding which place to try, because we didn't have big bellies to eat at more than 2 shops at any one time. They all looked so good and enticing. Finally we went to Hakata's Hide-chan Ramen, partly because M-san family was from Kyushu. The main characteristic of this ramen was in the tonkotsu soup, a white, milky, thick soup made from slow-cooking pork bones for over 12hours, and thinner noodle. It was good and yes, you should eat this only once in a while because it's very rich. Our bowls also contained a layer of blackened sesame seeds and crushed garlic.
We walked out of there where it jus got dark, in time to enjoy the harbor lit up with boats, with the statue of liberty in the foreground and the Rainbow Bridge and the Tokyo Tower in the background. With that image lingering in mind, we hurried back to Tokyo to catch the express train Sazanami back to Kisarazu.
Plum wine
At home we chatted into the night with our friend, sipping delicious iced umeshu (梅酒, plum sake) that M-san had made 5 years ago. The sake was sooo good, we had to ask M-san to buy us a similar one to take home, which we knew might not be as good as the home-made stuff we had that night. What we received was a half-bottle (430ml liquid + 70ml real plum fruit) Choya umeshu with 14% alcohol (MSRP „726), while the homemade umechu contained 30% alcohol.
|
Umekobucha
We also bought a can of plum flavored kelp tea („525)
|
Undokai
The next day was undokai day at S-chan school. An annual event at schools in Japan (and a similar form in communist countries like Vietnam too), it was a gathering of school children and their parents and families for a day of parades and exercises, and it was a very big deal. The kids practiced for this event weeks in advance. There were competitions and parades, with families watching on the sidelines, showing team spirits by cheering as loudly as possible for their kids and their teams. S-chan was only 5 years old so it was mostly parades and choreographed exercises for him, with one or two fun competitions. Each family packed their own lunch for an on-site picnic afterwards. It started quite early in the morning and usually wrapped up in the early afternoon. It was usually held on a Sunday with no school on the next Monday so that everyone got a chance to rest. The event was usually timed around the Taiiku-no-hi (Health and Sports Day) holiday.
We excused ourselves from this event as it would pretty much took an entire day, and we didn't have any vested interest in anybody there for that matter. We've experienced similar things back in Vietnam. Also you were not supposed to do anything else but copiously and politely following each and every activity. All that would be boring and taxing on our minds, so we would rather wandering around Tokyo for one last time. M-san took S-chan to school quite early (6am) so that he could find a prime spot, and our friend, after packing lunch, drove us close to Kisarazu station and we walked the rest of the way there. This was our last free day in Tokyo. As usual we took the express train into Tokyo, this time with no plan at all. It was early, and a Saturday, so not much to do and see really. We just went around a couple places, went back to Odaiba for lunch, did a bit of shopping then went home early because we're tired, and also because our friend had arranged for us to meet her godmother, Kōga-san. She was trained in kimono dressing and my wife would have a kimono session in the afternoon.
Kimono session
I took a nap until a bit before 6pm when Kōga-san arrived with her boxes of accessories and a couple kimonos carefully wrapped in Japanese paper (washi). Our friend and my wife had a kimono dressing session while I looked on. First was a summer yukata, light and simple, appropriate for walking and shopping. Next was the more elaborate kimono used in important events like attending a wedding. While dressing my wife, Kōga-san commented on the basic customs about kimono and wearing kimonos. The younger you are, the more your your neckline was concealed. Large-chested women needed more wrappings under the chest to level off the bust. The kimono length were adjustable by concealing the extra under the belt. The wide belt (obi) was difficult to do, and there was a pillow concealed in the back of the obi which helped support the woman's back, keeping it straight in all cases.
It went on for an hour or so. Afterwards we all went to bed early after a light dinner as the family was obviously very tired after the undokai, and my wife and I both were feeling under the weather (for different reasons) as well.
|
|