Friday was another warm and partly cloudy day - pretty much the same as for the previous days in the week. We had nothing planned but Will was desperate for some sushi, preferably from a sushi train, and I wanted to look at some Japanese art.
We had activated our Japanese Rail Pass the previous night which then alleviated the need to keep topping up the Suica card (the Japanese equivalent of Melbourne's Myki card, only more efficient and available for wider use). So our preferred mode of transport was by JR. Tokyo has an extensive and complicated city rail network which consists of JR lines which run above ground and the subway which runs underground. There is also the Tokyo monorail, which runs from Haneda Airport to the city and a number of privately owned rail lines. It's a bit difficult to get the hang of at first, but all major city rail networks are like that. And Tokyo is a major city if ever there was one.
Anyway, with our JR passes in hand we decided to work our way around in a loop from Shinagawa Station to Ueno Station on the Yamanote Line to get to the Japanese National Museum. It's probably not the best or biggest of Tokyo's art galleries but the brochure we had for it showed that it had a particular Hokusai painting I wanted to see. He's been a favourite of mine since I saw an exhibition of his work in Holland in 1987 and Robyn and I went to a big showing of his work in London in 1992.
The museum holds some wonderful pieces, fantastic swords and armour that Will was very interested in, and some wonderful kimonos that Robyn liked. I liked pretty much all of it. Unfortunately the Hokusai painting wasn't on display that day. No idea why, probably just as a result of natural rotations of pieces in the collection.
Long entrance to the gallery
By the time we had finished with the museum it was time for lunch and this time our search for the sushi train proved successful. We only had to wait a few minutes for a table to clear (Tokyo restaurants frequently have a line of people waiting out the front) and we were into it. The food was excellent and reasonably priced and we probably ate too much - Will felt a little unwell later that day.
Sushi Restaurant
Special dish delivery
Done and dusted
Post-lunch: Robyn found the department store she had been looking for and bought a pair of shoes; we wandered around the food section of another department store trying to get an idea of prices and work out if it was going to be possible to get some dried seaweed through customs; and then it was back home for a rest.
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