Day 2 – Trains and transport
We slept soundly and rose early. I was hungry and we didn’t organize breakfast so I went off in search of a drink. I found a small room by the elevators that had drink vending machines. These machines are great! I had a choice of beer, cold tea, fruit juice, jelly drinks, rice crackers and nuts. So my selection for this morning was beer, Nuts and a cold tea (for Elena). The beer was great but the tea for Elena was disgusting. We both agreed that we would not buy this again.
After a quick transfer back to Kansai we stopped for breakfast at the Airport Hotel – this was where we were supposed to stay at if we had arrived on the right day. Then it was off to the train station to catch our train to Tokyo.
Like clockwork the train pulled into the station right on time. The seats were facing the wrong direction but this was soon overcome with a flick of a button the seats turn around! The Shinkansen or “Bullet Train” travels at over 250km/h and this apparently isn’t the fastest train in Japan. We sped past stations and small communities. Japan it seems has houses built on every conceivable piece of flat land. As we travelled at felt like we had never left Osaka when the announcement came through the English speaking computer generated voice that we were now approaching Kyoto. Still further onward through Valleys and tunnels to Nagoya and passing the coast to Hamamatsu. Rounding a bend there it was, Mount Fujiyama – the world’s most cone shaped mountain. Until you see it for yourself nothing can describe the feeling of seeing something that until now was only a picture on a page. Desperately I scrambled for a camera and at 270km/h I snapped a few picture as the train raced along to Yokohama.
Tokyo is huge! Our Shinkansen Train stopped at a huge station with people everywhere all moving in organized kayos. We then had to make our way to another train before disembarking at our final destination. Finding our way through a maze of undercover tunnels and shopping quadrants we got to the Park Royal hotel. As we were entering from the train station the directions to the hotel were a little obscure. But we managed to find the small corridor hidden in this huge complex.
The Park Royal is rated as the second best hotel in all of Tokyo. Our hotel offers a full range of services and amenities for business and leisure travelers and is conveniently located near Tokyo’s main financial and business centers and within a short ride of the main shopping and entertainment district in Ginza. Nestled on top of an office tower the reception is 25 stories high and the hotel occupies the levels above that! We were on level 33. The view from the window was astounding. We could see the train station that we arrived on with its 8 platforms all receiving trains every 3 minutes. Our room was very spacious by Japanese standards as this hotel catered for international guests and business travellers. We had no time to spare; we dropped our bags and were straight down to the ground. We were off to explore Ginza, one of the most popular shopping streets in Tokyo and within walking distance of the hotel.
Dusk was approaching and as the night slowly rolled over the city the glow of neon lights started to transform the streets. There were more people shopping now and since we hadn’t eaten we thought it best to hunt out some local cuisine. We ambled past a little shop selling what looked like eggs made out of rice dough and nuts. I thought ok this is different and looks clean and tidy I’ll give this a try. With a little gesturing, pointing and nodding I had made the purchase. I was now the owner of a strange soft slightly sticky substance that had the looks of semitransparent egg with a green centre and felt a lot like an office stress ball. Elena and I walked around the corner into a small street and tore open the packet. After one bite Elena had had enough, I ploughed through the rest of it. The taste was real strange, the outer rice dough was icing sweet crossed with potato and the inside had a vanilla biscuit, hazelnut taste. It was obviously some sort of desert I thought.
As we meandered back to the main street of Ginza we found an interesting old beer hall and since it looked western we wandered in. This place was amazing, The Original Sapporo Lion Beer Hall – Ginza was the country’s first beer hall! The place was built in 1934. It’s what they call a mock gothic interior — looked pretty real to me. You half expect old German Beer Maidens to step out of the kitchen arms loaded with beer steins. The huge bar is constructed of marble and at each end is a massive urn that resembles a prop from a 1930s Flash Gordon movie. In old photographs taken during the Beer Hall’s heyday the urns, each of which is well over 1m tall, are overflowing with exotic plants. The centrepiece of the bar, however, is the huge mosaic of glass tiles on its rear wall, a scene in which several scantily clad women and children are harvesting the crops .The scene is bordered by many bunches of grapes and there’s a building in the distance, thought to be the original Ebisu brewery and there were smaller mosaics on every wall. The meals were huge! I have never seen king prawns the size I was eating. Elena was happy, she managed to find a pub that sold Guinness (I blame her workmates taking her to Ireland). As we staggered back to the hotel we stopped to take the odd picture of the Ginza Strip and the lights that glowed as brightly as day.
