Hakuba to Tokyo

It was impossible to book a taxi on Sunday morning in Hakuba, so we decided to don the backpacks for a brisk walk through the fresh snow to the bus terminal to line up for the first come first served unreserved bus seat to Nagano. Both Kate and Craig got to see wild monkeys on the bus trip.
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In Nagano, we changed over to the Shinkansen and scored unreserved seats again, on our way to Tokyo. A last minute decision to get off one station earlier, we were able to catch a single metro train to near our accommodation and only had to walk 1km to drop off our luggage. We weren't able to check-in until 4.00pm so we had three hours to kill. We backtracked to the Asakusa area to see the Senso-ji temple area and it was a district packed to the rafters with people. Katie was not enjoying it with so many people. We grabbed some lunch and decided to cross back over to our side of the river to scout out our local konbini and then after finding the elusive souffle cheesecake from Osaka, we took it down to a local park to just sit for a while. Craig has started tracking birds using an app called Merlin which has been delivering him a bird of the day. He actually managed to spot a bird of the day from a few days ago in the park! There was a fee museum in the park, so we spent a bit of time in there, covering an earthquake from the 1920s and the air raids of Tokyo during WWII.

We topped at the konbini across the road from our Ninja House Secret Base. This is a narrow two-storey plywood house in Sumida City which Craig booked. It even has a ninja costume we can get dressed in, with a warning not to wear it outside as the police might shoot you 😄. We are sitting in the front living room area with a toughened shoji screen between us and the footpath outside, watching a dubbed Last Samurai Standing on Netflix. Craig is incredulous at the low security level required in Tokyo.Read more