Day 32

Wednesday February 11

We have two more days in Tokyo so Maja asks if there’s some area I would be sad not to have seen. I’ve been quite curious about the Imperial Palace area. Not so much to see the Imperial Palace itself, more to just see another of the areas of Tokyo that have a claim on being its city centre. If anything really would be, surely it would be this place. So let’s go and see for ourselves.

In the event it’s mainly a business district surrounding a series of parks, inside which sits the Imperial Palace, which we actually don’t manage to see as it appears to be set behind some thick treeline. Or maybe we approach by the wrong angle. What we do get to see and walk around is the old ruined area of the original fortress which was built sometime in the 1400s. And around all this are walls of a similar age giving you fascinating contact with this distant past. 

From here we go straight to the modern and to do one of the tourist things we’ve really wanted to do and which got scratched off when we woke to snow and grey skies, rendering such a visit all but meaningless. We’re going to Tokyo Tower. This is the red and white Japanese taller version of the Eiffel Tower. It was also the tallest building in Japan until Tokyo’s Skytree was built in 2012. Incidentally, Skytree then totally eclipsed Tokyo Tower and actually makes it look small on the skyline even as the Tower asserts its own dominance. Skytree is almost twice as tall, standing at 634 metres as opposed to the Tower’s 333 metres. Oh, the Eiffel Tower is shorter by just three metres.  We haven’t managed to make it up Skytree this trip and – spoiler before you read about our last day of tomorrow – we don’t. And even today we don’t go all the way up to the top of Tokyo Tower. We decide to keep that in the bank as something to pull out on the next trip, as will be a visit to Skytree. 

However, even a trip up to the two storey central platform is perfectly adequate to get views all over the city as, even halfway up, you’re still standing 150 metres up in the air. 

The mad thing is that even as the Tower looks a little ‘small’ on the Skyline as you’re nearly always able to visually compare it to the enormous Skytree, it’s still taller than The Shard, the tallest building in the UK and the second tallest building in Europe. This rises to ‘just’ 309 metres. And as a comparison to that ‘mere’ 150 metres we decide to ascend to today, that’s still just 10 metres shorter than the height of London’s so-called Walkie Talkie which houses the Sky Garden, my own personal favourite high spot in London. So yeah, 150 metres is perfectly good enough and we get a great overall view of this city of cities we’ve been calling home for the past five weeks; tomorrow will be our last full day here.

Day 33

Thursday Feb 12

We don’t feel any last day sightseeing pressure at all and just take it easy around our own neighbourhood going souvenir and present buying and just gently taking care of packing. But while sightseeing is of the agenda, what we do want to do is revisit as many of our favourite Japanese restaurant experiences as possible. And among that we also need to make one last visit to our local onsen – that’s the hot springs bath thing.

Early evening sees us mirroring our first night here as we visit the local version of the fish restaurant chain we went to on day one. 

Later is a visit to a skewers place which does everything deep fried in breadcrumbs. Everything. The expected things like beef and chicken, and the more unexpected. A large slice of ginger. Half large onion pieces. Bananas. 

The onsen happens after this. Then there’s one last visit we have to make. A trip to Mum Stand, the smallest bar in the world (possibly) that’s become our favourite hang in Tokyo.

The weird thing here is that this is now the third time we’ve visited and the people have been totally different each time. Except that tonight we have the same barman as last time – the owner, Keito. The other weird thing is that when we arrive we’re welcomed like regulars and instantly slip into the company as though we’re part of the place. While it is a tiny bar, it does make use of its outside area in a kind of narrow but well lit alleyway as people all gather out there as well. There is a table out there, but people are all over the place really. And although it’s a little cold, the main door is often open and the chat and vibe totally mixes between the outside and inside people. When Keito mentions to them that we played here and an amused shock reaction goes round everyone and they want to see videos. Which we show them. They love them, and now the clamour comes for us to go home, get our guitar and come and play again. I go and do that, accompanied by two of the guys and Maja stays back to no doubt continue to charm everyone. The  last time we played we were inside the bar. This time we play outside in the alley and our new friends go crazy for our performance which feels like an instant concert and an instant hit. We keep it short at just two songs and if we were welcomed before as regulars, we now feel firmly established as performers of the place. So much so that we now pretty much book a gig for our next visit as Maja gets chatting to one of the regulars. He has his own band in Tokyo and would love us to contact them before our return as he would like us to arrange a show together. This is an amazing further addition to all the bars and other opportunities we have opened up for next time. This visit is already starting to crystalise in our minds. Something like a two to three week trip with five to ten shows. Which we feel we have the contacts to put together right now.

When we say a fantastic goodnight to this last night out in Tokyo, we continue on ourselves just a little bit more as we head over to the nearby late night restaurant we visited the first time we came here. 

With that we’ve managed to have dinner three times tonight and after never having done it until Friday last week, Maja now enters a restaurant and orders after midnight for the third time in a week.

We’re not back home and in bed until 3:30am. We’re up at 5:30. Little more than a nap really.

Day 34

Friday February 13

We manage that quite brilliantly and are up and out by 6am.

Then as we take off, we fly low over the city and see the pure modern magnificence of it all with the new sun illuminating it perfectly. Then the final spectacular curtain call comes as we do a low level fly by of Sky Tree. I think this is one of those moments which even people on the ground may have seen and admired as quite a view, let alone people high up in the Sky Tree itself. 

The flight here was 11 hours. It’s only a few hours into this flight that we discover that not only is this flight 14 hours, but it’s going the other way to how we got here. Meaning we flew here from west to east, but we are now, rather than flying back the way we came, we’re continuing east. Something to do with prevailing winds apparently. We had no idea. What this means is that by the time we land in Paris we’ve essentially flown all the way around the world. The biggest shock of all this comes when we realise we’re flying over Greenland. Greenland. What the hell are we doing here, flying among the arctic? During our trip I saw Mount Fuji and the Pacific Ocean for the first time. Now I have another first as I look down and see snowy arctic wastelands as far as we can see, like a white, mountainous ocean. 

When we get to Paris, we have a five hour layover which we cushion with a lot of chocolate. Then it’s a simple enough hop of a flight over the channel before rejoicing that we are back in London. Heathrow. Of the main London airports, apart from I guess the newish City Airport, this is our easiest airport journey. Straight on the tube and just one change – at Central London’s Tottenham Court Road which is only a 25 to 30 minute walk from our place. 

We get back home at just around midnight UK time of Friday going into Saturday. I do the time altered maths and it’s 27 hour actual hours since we left our Tokyo apartment. We really won’t be getting much done tomorrow.