It was Tuesday, and after being woken up at some ungodly hour (6am) by Mum, it was time to www.get-this-show-on-the-road.com. I awoke, with Dean staying asleep til his alarm went off at 6.30 to start packing bits and pieces I hadn't done the night before. It always feels you've got more stuff than you came with, because my backpack was full to exploding, but I still had to fit in some washing I had left in the dryer the night before.
We got breakfast at 7, and although I ate parts of it, I was getting full quickly. Not much different, but I am over soups (miso everyday when you aren't used to it is annoying). We settled the bill, which was dinner the night before and some coffees we had during the weak, but as they had been nice I gave them some keyring koalas I had given to people on our first trip over and had been kicking around in my jacket for 2 years. They seemed to like them, with Ganji saying that he had been to Australia a couple of times and had cuddled a (vicious, high on eucalypt) koala at a Koala park somewhere. The other manager clipped it to his shirt, with the young layabout putting it on his little side bag. We had already started bringing the baggage downstairs beforehand, so when one of the managers asked the young layabout to drive our baggage up the hill at 8.10, we breathed a sigh of relief. Just had to double check everything about 3 times and make sure we hadn't missed an errant sock or whatever. By the time that was all done we still had about 20mins before we had to start walking up the hill, so we sat around in the little lounge area while Mum used the computer and we did other stuff. If you get something free from the Japanese, they call it service, and one of the managers brought us out some (weak) coffees for free. Even though this hotel has hard beds and I'm not used to the food, I would stay here again, simply because they are nice, and the location is good.
So it was time to get a move on. After helping the young guy put our stuff in Ganji's Elgrand, we started slunking up the hill to the bus stop. Unlike most things here, the bus was 3 minutes late! Although usually I wouldn't worry about it (If a bus is 3 mins late in Bris, its on-time/early :P), we were hoping it wouldn't throw our schedule out too much. You see, the bus was meant to arrive at Nagano station at 9.55am, so we would have 13mins to get the baggage upstairs, buy our bullet-train tickets, then get downstairs to the platform and on the train. 3 minutes difference would have only given us 10mins to do this (oh noes!). We needn't have worried though. By the time we got to Nagano station we were 3 mins early, even though the bus driver has to do 40km/h down the mountain, and felt like he was driving like a granny on the highway. So with 16mins now, we had plenty of time. I headed upstairs with everyone's rail passbooks and bought the tickets in good time, from a cross-eyed young man with decent enough english. So we had comfortably made it, for a comfortable train.
It was a pretty uneventful journey back to Tokyo, we had gotten one of the super express trains, so it only stopped at about 3 or 4 stations between Nagano and Tokyo central. Just the usual lady coming passed with various items, drinking a beer while going backwards at 200km/h. Although we got to Tokyo bang on time, it felt a lot quicker because I was watching a 1.5hr show on my phone, but I didn't get to finish it. So after getting off and taking a quick break, we started our walk through the maze that is Tokyo central station. Not that it's hard to navigate, mind you, but with 25 platforms going subterranean you have to know where you want to go. We made it to the Yaesu side exit, and after sticking Mum and Whitney in a cab with their baggage. I trotted off through Yaesu Mall. I like having a photographic memory with built-in GPS. I remembered which exit of the mall goes to an escalator, so it saved me having to lug a 15kg bag upstairs. Actually, my backpack would have been of comparable weight....
I ended up meeting Dean and Conrad (who had set out a few minutes before me) coming down the overpass (I chose my route for flatness), then it was a short walk to the hotel. So we stayed outside the hotels entrance watching out for mum and Whitney. Had they been upducted by a taxi driver? Some 10 mins later they finally show up. I got accused of telling them the wrong street name. Me? Wrong??? Never..... So after they paid the cab driver we hauled our luggage into the lobby. I found out later that cab driver was a bit clueless and actually had to stop and ask for directions! I double checked the hotel's website and I indeed did have the correct street name. So ner :P
We couldn't actually check in til 3pm and it was only just after 12. So the lady threw a cargo net over our baggage and we went to MOS Burger. It was Conrad's first chance to sample this oddly named fast food chain, but he seemed to enjoy it. I think a couple of the girls recognised us from last year. Me, Dean and Mum munged out on a Spicy Cheezburga, while Conrad woosed out and got a normal one.
We had been sitting in the park eating them, when me and Dean had started feeling cold. We quickly headed back to the hotel to grab our coats, before we shuffled along to Takashimaya. As I mentioned last time, its a swanky department store, like David Jones, but with things that you would actually buy/wear. We particularly wanted to show Conrad the below ground food court, which is a foodies dream. I'll show you vids of it when we get back, but suffice to say we killed a couple of hours in there just looking.
We then headed to Yaesu Mall. Because they hadn't come this way before, Conrad hadn't seen the mall at all. It is pretty big for something that runs under the road. We did a figure 8 around the eastern end of the mall before it was time to head back to the hotel to check in. We stayed at this hotel last year when we came, so we weren't expecting any surprises. After lugging the luggage up to the rooms, we sat down on the bed for a few minutes.
When we eventually decided to go fetch dinner/go out again, we headed back to the mall. Mum and Whitney wanted to head to a cheap clothes shop they visited last year. Us Boyz!(TM) didn't feel like sticking around, so we went around the corner to Camera no Kitamura. They had second hand lenses and bodies which Dean wanted to show Conrad. I wouldn't have minded picking up another point-n-shoot. You see, I took a tumble when we visited the monkey park last week, and since then it's been making a grinding noise when it tries to the move the lense in and out. But it's still working (mostly) and being the good scotsman I am, I don't want ot pay for another one. Not just yet anyway, and when I do replace it, it will be better.
So after coming back and finding Whitney with a few more bags/Mum a few yen poorer, we took the Con to Daimaru which is sandwiched between Yaesu mall and the Tokyo Station. Again the food court levels is the place to be with plenty of fresh produce and cakes etc to be had. We bought a couple of cakes before we headed for our gyoza place. As you may have heard from my blog/constant talking, this gyoza place (Paou) has won awards at the World Food Fair for their gyoza. But now we were all hungry and Conrad hadn't been here before. We had a good feed with me and mum, and Conrad and Dean sharing a gyoza plate (10 small pork, 5 medium beef and 4 premium beef) between ourselves. Whitney munged out on a big bowl of ramen and gyoza. Dean and I were still hungry afterwards, so we ordered a another plate of pork gyoza each.
Last year, everyone was sick, and we had a bottle of Drambue, so we went back to a familiar bottle shop in the Yaesu Mall to see what they had (Mum had seen a bottle of Glayva last year and wouldn't have minded that). We looked around for a while. Even though it is only the floor space of Boost Juice in Germside, it is stacked to the ceiling with high quality stuff. One thing I love (I wish more places in Australia did this) was that you could buy 10ml samples for between 100-250Y. This is a fantastics idea, as it allows you to either try stuff before you buy, or sample stuff that you would never get a chance to try. Dean found some Blackadder 32yo Single Malt Scotch for sampling (250Y). It was a raw cask scotch, so it had bits floating in it, but boy was it good. It was smooth all the way down, but lit a fire in the belly that didn't go away for a while. I would gladly go back tomorrow and spend another 250Y for another nip. In the end, Mum decided to get some Courvoisier cognac. The bottle cost 2960Y (about $32) but when I looked it up on the interwebs, the same bottle in Australia costs $91 online!
We went back to the hotel and sampled that, as well as ate our deserts that we had bought at Daimaru, but it was getting late and we had been up and travelling since early. So with the first afternoon of Tokyo out of the way, we passed out.
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