What we did Thursday May 3

It’s now Friday morning - I have decided to mention the date each day as I can’t see it listed in the blog..just numbering the days since the first entry! Anyway, will now try to remember all that we did yesterday as last night I decided to go straight to sleep rather than hype myself up writing!

So we as usual started well with coffee at Blue Bottle, which we have now discovered was Cathy’s favourite coffee venue when she was here! Then we again braved the station and successfully took a train to Ueno. There is a beautiful park here, and we wandered there and got a ticket into the peony garden which was perfect, peaceful and amazing...there is always such attention to detail and attendants were sweeping and collecting any fallen petals etc...also a shrine - Tosho-gu shrine. There is a pond, a zoo and yesterday there was what looked like a market but we discovered it was a not a regular one, but entirely of children’s books. When we arrived there were not millions of people, and we had the garden in calm, but by afternoon everyone was out! It is golden week and yesterday was children’s day which explains the book fair, and by the end of the day all over the city people are out and about in their millions, literally! It is chaotic but not threatening, and rather fun, unless you are queuing up for anything.

In the park there is also the Tokyo National museum where we managed to get entry and that was beautiful...we wanted to see Japanese art...there was another special exhibition in another building which was treasures of the Prado which would have been silly for us to see as we’ll be in Madrid in September! Also, forgot to mention that there was dancing in the park...rather elderly Japanese, mainly women but some men, doing a slow almost tai chi type dancing....also there were some buskers playing steel drums, sort of hollowed and making a weird and rather beautiful soft sound! So lots going on and we had a ball.

Returned to Shinjuku and the milling masses there, but we know our way now, especially if we stay outside the station and walk round the street. So our next event was meeting Greg and Helen at 5.30....they are staying at Cassandra’s apartment, and explained what subway station to go to...which proved a bit tricky from Shinjuku even though not very far away...but we made it following directions (found later there is a direct express route from there back to Shinjuku but the JR information didn’t tell us that!) and met them as appointed, Helen with the dogs on leads!! Fun walking round a neighbourhood away from the frenetic energy of the central city. After a drink with them at the apartment, we walked to the restaurant, Fuku. A tiny busy place, which specialises in yakitori...cooked in the centre of the room over coals, everything - meat, vegetables - came on sticks and was DELICIOUS! You just keep ordering till you have had enough...scallops, chicken balls, mushrooms, garlic, asparagus, chicken wings.....yum. So a lovely night, and we walked back to the station and got the express back to Shinjuku. Great day.

And to top it off, we successfully made bookings for the restaurants that Cathy and Paul had highly recommended, for Saturday (Paul) and Monday (Cathy)! So we are flushed with success. On the intervening nights we will have bowls of ramen or plates of food from the many dives round us here. Will put some photos, but the internet is rather weak and uploading can be very slow, so may put one now, and add more separately...Read more