Change of plan

If at first you don't succeed, check the website and discover which days the venue is actually open!

After being foiled yesterday I had visited the Tokyo National Museum website and confirmed that they are closed on Mondays. Research fail!

Comforted by the knowledge that the museum would be open today I rode the Yamanote line to Uguisudani Station, arriving at the museum entrance just after it opened at 10am.

The museum is Japan's largest and oldest and houses over 11,000 items. Now call me a philistine, but it seemed to my Western eyes that 9,000 plus of those items were either Buddhas, or painted panels.

I appreciated the first fifty or so, but after that they seemed to merge together.

I did get more excited when I climbed to the second floor and beheld the Samurai sword collection. These swords are absolute works of art, with thousands of hours of work put into crafting each one of them. This was a personal highlight for me, as I've been intrigued by the concept of Samurai since I was a kid.

After spending another hour or so making my way through the rest of the collections I left the museum and headed back to Akihabara, just because I could. You can never see too many gadgets!

The final stop for my last central Tokyo odyssey was the Tokyo Dome. I'm a baseball fan, and Japan is officially the World's top baseball nation (check the results of the World Baseball Classic 2023). Ideally, I would have loved to see a game at this impressive stadium, but the next best thing was to look around it and buy some merch. 13,000 Yen later I walked out of the fan shop with a Tokyo Giants jersey proudly clutched in my hand.

Today's touring list ticked off it was time to head back to the hotel, because there was a new plan in town.

We were booked to stay at the Park Hotel until we fly out for Taipei on Thursday, but someone had decided that this hotel didn't meet our very particular standards. The breakfast buffet wasn't buffety enough. The TV didn't have any English language channels, and there was occasional noise from the trains below.

I know, who could possibly live in this squalor! It's inhuman!

The upshot is that I booked us into the Hilton Tokyo Bay on Sunday night, so, as of this afternoon we've said 'See ya later Park Hotel!' and 'Hello Hilton'.

The other benefit to this unexpected move is that, just coincidentally, the Hilton Tokyo Bay is right next to Disneyland, so guess who's booked another day at the parks tomorrow.

It's a grueling, dirty job, but someone has to do it.Read more