The one thing I have to be mindful of about Robyn and holidays is that she always believes an hour sitting contemplating the universe is an hour lost, so, as much as possible, every day should be filled to the brim with "stuff". Day 2 of the trip was no exception, as Robyn had booked us a half-day Tokyo bus tour - starting early.
It seemed like no sooner had we got to bed and sleep than we had to be up again, breakfasted and off to a hotel lobby on the other side of Shinagawa Station by 7:50am. This is normally about 10-12 minutes walking, or three by bus. The timetable next to the bus stop seemed to imply that a bus would be along about every 5 minutes or so (this being Japan you could drop the "or so" out of that sentence). But there didn't seem to be much traffic around and the bus didn't arrive, and didn't arrive, and about the time we thought we might just walk it showed up.
Shinagawa Station is a huge place and the previous night it had been packed with people at about 9pm. Monday morning at 7:45am is seemed almost deserted. That made for easier walking but didn't alleviate the problem of having two Prince Hotels on the same side of the station. We, of course, picked the wrong one.
With every bus tour there is always one set of people who is late - this time it was us. I figured later that we probably got to the rendezvous point with about 2 minutes to spare before they abandoned us.
It might have been better to have found out where the tour was actually leaving from as our bus proceeded to wander all over inner-Tokyo picking up passengers at various hotels, most of which had Prince in the name somewhere.
But start we did about 9am. First stop was Tokyo Tower, which had been modelled on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, used as a TV and radio transmitting tower but was now superseded. I'm not sure what it is used for these days.
Then it was on to the Meiji Shrine with its huge park, 120,000 trees and some wonderful sake barrels that have been donated by various breweries.
Collection of sake barrels
It didn't take long to find the grumpiest among them.
The tour ended at the Imperial Palace East Garden, which, while pleasant, wasn't overly memorable.
That was followed by a quick trip out to Electric Town at Akihabara for Will to have a look around. We figured he'd want to return at some point and we just needed to get an idea of what and where.
That done it was back home for dinner at a small restaurant outside Shinagawa Station. It's always fun to order our meals off pictures on the wall. The chicken and pork dishes looked rather inviting. The squid and crab that arrived was also pretty good, which was a bit lucky.
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