Saturday 29th April - Takayama to Tokyo

Today was essentially a travelling day. Our first train left at 9:30am and took us on a very scenic trip through mountains and deep gorges all the way to Nagoya. Arriving at noon we had time to buy a bento box for lunch before boarding the shinkansen which took us to the southern outskirts of Tokyo. The latter was our last ride on a shinkansen, much to our sadness. They have been great trains to ride on and are ridiculously fast. From there it was just a 20 minute trip on the third train of the day, to get us into Ueno station at 2:30pm. The whole trip seemed pretty easy and the trains are always very comfortable. 

Tea plantation

Flooded rice paddies ready for planting

After so much public transport and sitting down all day, we chose to waive getting a bus to near our hotel and walked the 25 minutes instead. Believe it or not, despite being in Tokyo city with 14 million people, who should we bump into but our friends from Nelson, who are doing a similar four-week exploration of Japan to us. What a laugh! We will catch them again in a few days' time because we are flying back to NZ, via Fiji, on the same flights.

By the time we got to our hotel and checked in, our plan of jumping on a subway to get to a huge bookstore was waning. A massive bookstore here, which consists of three linked buildings, claims to be the biggest art bookstore in the world. John and I are particularly interested in finding a book or two about Japanese woodblock prints. They often depict scenes of the old Nakasendo and Takaido walking routes between Kyoto and Tokyo. We have walked stretches of both, and love the painting style of Hiroshige in particular. However, the shop is open every day and until 2am each morning so we figure maybe we can do it tomorrow instead.

It is a public holiday today, which kickstarts the holiday Golden Week throughout Japan. We wandered through Asakusa market and temple area late in the afternoon, and very much enjoyed feeling familiar with the place because as this where we stayed four years ago. Queues of locals were lined up to give their offerings and say prayers at the huge temple, and masses of people were enjoying the market stalls and shopping. The whole area was buzzing and full of energy. 

The old & the new - Tokyo Skytree in the background

By contrast, we were flagging a little so decided to buy some essential supplies for a home-made breakfast in the morning and a long cold beer to devour in our room in the more immediate future. 

Having revived a little, we headed out for dinner, and by a roundabout route ended up at a little place about 3 doors along from our hotel! Having sat down and accepted the semi-standard warm moist hand towels, we found the menu was slanted to the unfamiliar. Horsemeat, tongue, tripe, heart, liver and more besides. It reminded us of some years ago when one Sunday night we found ourselves in another offal restaurant, that time in deepest Italy. Here there was other delicious food on the menu, and we chose a range of dishes, with a single heart & tongue skewer to keep to the spirit of the place. 

Our offal restaurant menu

It was a fun little local joint, and like other places we have seen it had rows of bottles of shochu (barley-based liquor, around 25%) each tagged with the name of the owner and the date of purchase. Karen counted 75 bottles lined up!

The food proved delicious, really tasty and smoky. But we will try somewhere else tomorrow night!