Monday May 7, a calm day!

A very relaxed day. So far anyway - it is only just before 4 pm, and we’ve come back to rest and change and get ready to go our to our second fancy dinner - at Abysse - highly recommended by Cathy, and also Greg and Helen. Looking forward to it, and we DO know where it is! So this morning we headed out to Nihombashi where we had been before on the first day, and had walked back to Ginza. This time we went the other way and saw a small shrine - the shrine of the Golden Helmet - set amongst high rise buildings and highways, and then we had a visit to the Tokyo stock exchange. Interesting, with history and pictures like a mini museum, and you can walk round and see where the floor was, and the bell. It is all on computers now, but there is a board with numbers and showing the activity. Beautifully kept building of course.

Then we walked to the very elegant department store Mitsukoshi...we had rather hoped to watch the opening ceremony they do each morning but were too late. But we had a fun wander in there, and ended in the food hall in the basement, got a little food, just enough to keep us going till dinner tonight, but as usual had to find somewhere to eat it! We thought we saw a little park where people were sitting, but it turned out to be a smoking area - the first we’d seen - but finally found another area where people were sitting...they were all on their phones, not eating, but we didn’t think that mattered...hope we weren’t being too rude! Forgot to mention that in Mitsukoshi in the men’s tie section there were some beautiful ties that we were admiring, especially a gorgeous one in a special case - then we saw it was ¥1,000,000 !! We talked to the lady who saw us looking at it and she told us it was hand embroidered silk!! That’s the sort of shop it was! Though we did get Liv a t-shirt for her birthday there!

We were going to spend time in a big park on the other side of Shinjuku but we read that the Japanese garden section which is the special bit and requires admission is closed on Mondays, so we’ll do it another day. Also it is starting to sprinkle a bit. On the way back we called in to the tour booking place at Shinjuku station and booked a ticket to do a round trip to Hakone....Greg and Helen recommended this...you go yourself at the times you choose and if it is nice weather (which it won’t be sadly) we would see Mt Fuji, but it will be a good day anyway, and a change from the city. This is for tomorrow but if the weather was too bad we could do it Wednesday. But the forecast for the rest of the week is not good. We have had good weather so far, and rain never means rain all day!

We had put off this excursion till this week waiting till after Golden week. This morning was a normal Monday morning, everyone streaming to work, not on holiday...quite a different atmosphere. Will report on the dinner tomorrow morning...Leer más