Tokyo Day 2
On Sunday morning I woke up to a call from my friend Jerome. He was on his way into Tokyo from Kanagawa and would be arriving in 55 minutes. I showed, dressed, checked out, left my bag in a locker at the station (300 yen to lock it and get the key). We met up and went into an incredibly classy building next to the station. The place dripped of money and most of the restaurants (of which there were 40 or so) had pictures of their chef on the menus outside the door. A lot of the places were French so Jerome helped with the menus.
We eventually settled on a place on the basement floor which was a french bakery and ate some breakfast/lunch. I can’t really describe what I got… I think it was potato and something else with a whole load of herbs and spices put on top of some bread and baked in. It tasted like pizza. It was alright.
We got onto the Chuo line and went to Harajuku Station next. We saw all the weirdos on the bridge again and I saw some familiar faces, like the guy who pretends to be Bono with his back to you. His act had really come on since last year and this time he shouted approximations of the first few lines from the choruses of some of the more popular songs (Vertigo, etc). Last year it was only dancing.
I thought I saw the entrance to Yoyogi Park and we walked in there. We passed under a great big Torii and I thought it looked just like the one in Meiji-jingu Shrine from last year. We continued and we got to a big wall of white containers from various sake breweries. A tour-guide came up to us and asked if we wanted a tour and I did my best to ask “is this Meiji-jingu Shrine” without surprising her. I didn’t succeed in suppressing her surprise. It happened to be a day where there were free tours and she was doing the English tour. We asked her to do it in Japanese and explain the difficult parts in English and she obliged. When finishing the tour she told us that she had lived in Britain for a few years, had married a British man and has two daughters from that marriage. Jerome lives near her house and she was so impressed with him that she gave him her card and asked her to call some time to come over and hang out with her daughters.
We left through a different gate and ended up back at the bridge. We continued to that busy street whose name I can never remember but to which I have been three times now. We walked its length, sat in a cafe for a while discussing our experiences in Japan, and finally got the Chuo line back to Tokyo Station where we parted ways. Next time he’ll come to Okazaki I believe. Looking forward to it!