Leaving Tokyo

How I'll remember Tokyo

Time to go, time to leave Tokyo. A big city that must suck a good proportion of the world's energy with all its lights and screens and electronic advertising.


--> We are both awake early, 6am. I stir just a bit and I hear, “Baby?” instantly.

“Yes, honey.”

“It’s 5am, er, 6am.”

We both lay back for a minute but, clearly, we are both awake by then.

8.30am. We’re pack and are ready to head out to eat something, before the 10am checkout.

8.45am. Sam is watching a movie on his phone.

We’re ready to leave to go get breakfast.

Our bullet train leaves at 1.50pm, half an hour train ride from Shinjuku.

Off to see the snow monkeys.

10.15am. We leave our AirBnB. We head off up our little street to the main road, passed the Mercedes carpark (Still have no idea why there is a carpark that only has Mercedes in it) for the last time.

10.30am. As we meander off down the main for the last, across the lights on the green man, passed the large open car park, the dodgy wheel starts its final disintegration on Sam’s suitcase. Not good.

10.45am. We’re in Excelsior Caffe drinking our last good coffee. The staff are lovely, the Japanese are always helpful.

Rodeo Drive is across the road. That is what the shop is called.

So, I'm sitting in a coffee shop with free wifi while Sam goes off to visit the local Shinjuku Samsonite shop to look at new suitcases, as the dodgy wheel on his suitcase, which has been dodgy all the way through Europe, and before, may not survive, this morning as we head to the bullet train to head to our next stop. So, what else is there to do but post photos.

The sun is shining, it is a lovely morning.

11.36am. Time to get going, off into the blue. Sam picked out a new purple suitcase, but in the end we decide just to risk it. What is the worst could happen, the wheel could come off and he’d have to carry it?

12.09pm. The train out of Shinjuku; which train to catch is confusing, always confusing in the labyrinth that is Shinjuku station, but we got on the right train in the end.

It’s a half an hour train ride JS24 is our stop. Our train leaves at 1.50, or 2.18pm, depending on what you read. It is 1.50pm when it leaves.

12.47pm. Waiting in the waiting room, we have an hour before our bullet train leaves 🍁 haha, not that kind of leaves 🍁 oh, stop it.

Busy, busy, busy, of course, like everything else in Tokyo. People waiting, people coming and people going.

Sam has found Tokyo Banana, someone recommended to us, should we buy a box? No, we decide, it just looks like confectionary.

We buy some cold take away, rice and chicken and beef. We scoff it down.

I’m getting antsy and want to get to the platform. We head up there. Initially we are waiting in the wrong place. There are places to queue on the platform itself, and car numbers on the signs above. One bullet train comes and goes, midnight blue and as slippery as you like. Sam goes to the toilet. Another bullet train comes and goes, like moulded green plastic. Sam sends me to the toilet. Another bullet train comes and goes, green moulded plastic and pink moulded plastic joined together. It’s getting close to our departure. We find the place we are supposed to queue, car 6. The Japanese queue in an orderly fashion, always.

Our bullet train comes. Our reserve seats are 17a and 17b. We slide out of the train station right on time, of course. The countryside is populated with houses. The houses never stop. The is barely any undeveloped land. Houses cover the entire place, they never let up. In the middle of all of that there is a stepped hi rise building, that looks gruesome. Is that public housing? It is the only hi rise building to be seen in a sea of roofs.

2.48pm. We are in Nagano. It’s been raining, now there’s a surprise, but is has stopped now.

We have to buy a ticket for the local train service. Where to go, what to buy. The ever helpful Japanese give us instructions and point us in the right direction with their customary smile.

3.13pm. We’re on the train to our last stop for today. It is kind of a dated postmodern space age train, like it was super modern in the 1960s, perhaps. The carpets are all worn, but it has Star Trek doors, that pssss and then open as you approach. I think it may have been new when the first Star Trek series was produced.

We’ve made all our connections, the plans have worked out, it is always a good feeling when you pull it off. Just 20 minutes to go, 3.33pm we leave. The train is empty now, but I guess that means nothing in Japan 🇯🇵.

Sam has gone to get a drink.

And the train fills up, with bloody tourists, of course. Mung bean eating, non armpit shaving, pot smoking (nothing wrong with that), vegan no doubt, filthy German tourists. All off to see the snow monkeys. Why do we want to see the snow monkeys? Something to do? Because we want to see the countryside, says Sam.

The blond boy German is photo mad. He dashes all over the train taking shots. He and his girlfriend get off the train before us, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

3.50pm. We passed the Suzka rail yards

4.20pm. We arrive at our destination Yudanaka the end of the line in our outdated space age train. The nice lady from our hotel picked us up in her bright red Toyota people mover, as prearranged.

We book into our hotel with a fat bloke from New York and a boy and two girls who I think are from Germany. The fat guy from New York is keen to get to the onsen, the hot baths this area is famous for. That and the snow monkeys, of course.

We book to go to the onsen at 7pm. The staff give us traditional Japanese outfits to change into, we even get clacky wooden shoes.

We had a wander around town. People were out and about in their onsen gowns and jackets, clacking up and down the street in their wooden shoes.

Eggs were boiling in a bowl outside one of the hotels. Some guy was bending down getting himself an egg, in his onsen gown, he stood up when he was done. He’s cute, I say. He smiles, I sense, then he speaks to me in fluent English, something about the boiled eggs being a tradition. He clearly has heard me call him cute. He was there with his two younger brothers and his mum and dad. Congrats mum and dad, 3 cute men added to the worlds stockpile of cute men. The oldest is the most handsome though.

We head back to the hotel, wanting to go to the onsen earlier than we’d booked, so we didn’t have to eat too late. We just miss the 6pm shuttle, it was full anyway, the American from New York was in the front seat. So, they took us at 6.15pm, when the shuttle was back.

The onsen was a big zooshy across town. It frequented by mostly old men, but there were a few cuties there.

We learned the etiquette of the onsen, how to wash ourselves on the stool first, at washing areas dotted all around the edge of the baths. (If you have ever been to a gay sauna, not that dissimilar)

There was the outside pool and spa and the inside pool. The inside pool seemed quite hot. I liked the outside pool the best.

We ended up in the spa with Burn the Dutch boy we booked in with (not German at all) and the fat New Yorker. Burn kisses us good bye when he has to go back in the earlier shuttle to the hotel. (Those Dutch boys, always so affectionate, you've got to love that in a guy)

We ate dinner in the restaurant. I had pork, Sam had an apple beef curry. We had chicken for an entrée. Burn ate next to us with his two girlfriends.

We went for a walk after dinner, just to see the lights of the narrow streets, trying to see if we could see any other restaurants, armed with the explanatory map. But the other restaurants aren’t obvious. And it was cold, so we went home.

We bought ice cream and ate it in the shop where we bought it, over a tea ceremony fire pit. I had vanilla and mascarpone with nuts. Sam had green tea.

We came home and went through all of our photos.

It is very much like the mountainous regions of Italy, or Switzerland, or Austria, same quaint kind of village feel, but everyone is doing hot springs baths, every day they visit the onsens, it is why people come here, after all, that and the snow monkeys

In bed by 11.11.