Saturday May 5 - amazing day!

Today was fabulous. Though long. We set off at about 9, and didn’t return till about 9.30 pm having walked about 24 kms according to Amr’s app! As usual we started at Blue Bottle, then caught the subway to Tokyo station. This was to get to our destination of walking in the Imperial gardens, and also a dry run for getting there with luggage on Thursday when we get the Shinkansen to Kyoto. All fairly simple - Tokyo station is not nearly as fearsome as Shinjuku!!

We didn’t have crowd problems today, or certainly not in the morning, and Golden Week is now ending and all will return to the normal chaos. Had a gorgeous walk in the gardens, quite extensive and as usual peaceful and perfect. After perhaps a couple of hours we went out by a different gate and visited the MOMAT - Museum of Modern Art Tokyo. This was really good..Japanese art since late 1800s, and occasionally works of known European artists. Just beautiful. And so beautifully arranged...lovely ambience. They do this well. Before actually going in, we got a bento box for lunch from a truck in the grounds of the museum...just right to satisfy us till dinner at the Iron Chef restaurant tonight.

After that we had a great long walk - first to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours all the war dead and is a bit controversial...I sat under trees and read and played with my phone, and amr went into the war museum. Then off we set back to Ginza as this is the other side of Tokyo station and where we were to dine, so we wore respectable clothes so we would not go back to the hotel ....good plan, and we walked right round the Imperial Palace moat, a beautiful walking track, trees, water, paddle boats in one spot...and found our way back.

Shopped and wandered in the Ginza, knowing that we had plenty of time to find the restaurant by 6.45 (it was a 7 pm booking but we were told to be there by 6.45...very precise. So all was well till we had our one time of consternation for the day. Amr knew it was on the Ginza, just near UniQlo...but when we tried to find the precise address we looked at the entry in iCal, which had a different address, further away...by now we were cutting it fine, so we decided to get a taxi - hopped in, showed him the address, but of course he couldn’t understand the English...finally thought he had it and we started to go, then Amr found the location on the hotel phone and it WAS on the Ginza....we hopped out of the taxi, hot tailed it to the area near UniQlo but still couldn’t find it...the app said we were close, we asked a shop nearby and she took us to the elevator area in that very building, pressed 8 for us and up we went...we would NEVER have found it on our own...only Japanese....so we had a very authentic and amazing meal. We chose to sit at the counter, facing all the theatre in the kitchen and had the set menu...many courses, but light and delicious and we didn’t feel over fed by the end. Amazing experience. Subway home, managed to escape out of Shinjuku station and here we are safe and sound!Read more