Tokyo Hotels
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Tokyo
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Sunday 4th of May
Alison: We had thought about going to Mt Fuji on Sunday before flying out to Canada on Monday evening, but as it turned out, Japan had been given the Monday as a public holiday in recompense for the actual holiday falling on the Saturday, so the whole region was full of Japanese celebrating their important Golden Week holiday season. Finally reaching Odowara, Michael went to a tourist bureau who explained that with the place overrun with tourists we would be unable to explore the region properly as the private trains and gondolas which take you up into the mountains had over hour long queues at each stage. So instead we cheerfully decided to head back to Tokyo a day early and chill out there before flying out.
It was interesting how many people came up to us that day, complimenting us on our family and giving little gifts to the children - really friendly and lovely. Apparently the holiday is in celebration of Children, so maybe that is why, but we were quite overwhelmed to be offered biscuits and beautiful origami paper by one sweet elderly man, who told us what a lovely family we were. I suppose these two blonde haired, blue eyed kids do rather stand out in Japan!
We stayed at the ANA Intercontinental, which was very salubrious, but the staff were rather up themselves, a bit looking down their noses at us and suggesting a horrible nearby takeaway/fast food type mall for us to eat in that night. We took one look, came back, and then they sent us to the more buzzing region of Gion, where we found a fun little Italian place, drank red wine, ate seriously good gnocchi (although the serves were tiny) and people watched. This is the area where young Tokyo people hang out and it was much more Westernised - another interesting aspect of Japan's diverse culture and lifestyle.
Monday 5th May
Alison: We had a really good sleep in and basically chilled out in the hotel room, before having a quick buffet meal in the hotel (booked out as it was a holiday - but in his usual way Mike managed to find us a table anyway when he explained we were catching a taxi in 30 minutes so they squeezed us in!).
The taxi got us to Tokyo Railway Station just in time to catch our Shinkansen to Narita airport with quite a bit of running along corridors wheeling heavy cases and making it on the train with one minute to spare! From there we wandered around Narita airport and managed to get some dodgy wireless internet coverage which enabled us to finish off some blogging and send it off before we got on the plane. Then it was a thoroughly uncomfortable 10 hour overnight flight, with the kids sleeping on top of us and us getting very little at all! When we arrived in Vancouver at 8 in the morning, our bodies knew it was actually 3 a.m. so it was hard to keep going, but it was great to be in Canada!
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