Tag: Japan

The big plans for the day was to finally get out to the Sapporo Beer Museum which has a biergarten next to it with the availability of all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink. Having that to look forward to, I basically didn’t do anything all day, other than debate back and forth over whether I should starve myself in preparation or not. Hanging around the hostel all morning, I did pop over to a supermarket to grab something for a light-ish lunch (a small sushi bento, enough bread so I could finish off my marmalade, and a yogurt). I took a nap and studied for a bit before I reckoned it was time to head out.

I decided to swing by a few tourist attractions that are on the list, but haven’t been particularly enticing. Essentially, I walked over to the Old Prefecture Government Building, which hosts a few galleries about Hokkaido history and what not. One of the rooms was completely dedicated to discussing the “Northern Islands,” a group of four islands between Hokkaido and the Kuril Island chain that is contested between Japan and Russia. Though there is obviously a layer of propaganda, the Soviet Union did declare war on Japan days before Japan’s surrender just so it could grab territories in East Asia.

On my walk out to the Sapporo Beer Museum, I swung by the Tokyu Department store again to go ahead and buy the famous chocolate cake (called Mont Blanc). Afterwards, I headed over to a park to dig in. The park was next to the old Sapporo factory, which confused me as to how there were two old Sapporo factories, mere blocks apart.

Anyways, the museum was good (and free), and I resisted the temptation to hit the onsite bar to sample a number of beers while I was waiting for my Tinder date to get off of work and meet up. I did my best to get my money’s worth, but because the “Genghis Khan” grilled lamb dish takes time to cook between rounds, it slows down how fast you can eat while you have to compete against a hard 120 minute limit (and they cut you off 20 minutes before your time runs out). It was really tasty and paired well with the beers, but I probably needed another half hour to really get my fill.

It was barely 8 when we finished, and I had a 40 something minute walk back to my hostel. Being really hyper from the food, the drink, and the talking, I did pop into a convenience store (or two) on the way back for some dessert and a “digestif.”

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Sushi lunch	596
Choco Mont Blanc	378
Genghis Khan	4424
Ice cream	180
Beer	394
Total:	5972 JPY (RMB 403.1 RMB) (USD 58.32)

Running Total: RMB 40006.2 (USD 5788.5)
Daily Average: RMB 327.9 (USD 47.45)

I don’t know if it is merely the fact that the Japanese segment of the trip is wrapping up soon or that I am going to have to deal with a week’s worth of travel (hopping from Seoul to Beijing to Moscow to Berlin to begin the European section of the travels), but its become apparent to me that I’m mentally checked out of Japan. I was browsing the aisles of a grocery store last night and filled with a sense of loss that despite my best efforts to eat all the junk food, I had only sampled a tiny fraction of the myriads of snacks. The same is true of the alcohol section. Heck, I’ve barely even put a dent into the curry section of grocery store. One would have to stay here a couple of years to eat one’s fill.

Speaking of food, that has become the defining raison d’etre for my time in Sapporo. After a lazy enough morning, I was resolved to go out and see something on the list of sites in Sapporo and I picked the Moiwa Ropeway primarily because there was a recommended restaurant near the base of it. I hopped on a city tram to reach the base of the mountain and was delighted to find the restaurant recommendation spot on. Given my love of curry in general, the fact that Sapporo has its own unique take on Japanese curry, i.e. “soup curry,” got me curious. The restaurant was a small mom and pop owned joint full of old fashioned bric-a-brac and I ordered a set meal including a salad and a cup of coffee.

After enjoying my meal, I walked around the corner to wait for a free shuttle bus to reach the base of the ropeway, which was only a 8 minute walk. Sapporo claims to have one of the best night views in Japan, so I imagine the mountain is quite popular at night. But I didn’t care and was going up there at high noon. As such, I got to avoid the crowds. I shelled out the money for the ropeway, which consists of two sections: a cable car and a funicular.

The view was nice, but there really wasn’t much to see. I suppose riding in the variety of vehicles is the attraction in and of itself. After thoroughly perusing the gift shop with its selection of Hokkaido specialties (including, incredulously vacuum-sealed, refrigerated raw shellfish), I headed back down the mountain.

I decided to take a longish walk and headed due east about 12 blocks to reach the river, which divides Sapporo into east and west sections. The river is flanked by grass and trees, and as I followed it north about another dozen blocks, I would occasionally pass groups of locals out sunbathing, barbecuing, or wading into the shallows. As I neared the “equator” of the city, I cut back up onto the city streets to pass the TV tower at the far east end of Odori Park on my way to a department store a block south of the train station.

I took a stroll through the basement level of food stalls, looking for one particular sweets shop while drooling at all the available delicacies. I didn’t buy the particular cake, but bookmarked it for a possible later visit. Still craving an afternoon snack, I went to check out an ice cream parlor which sells elaborate, expensive parfaits. I hesitated for a while, taking a loop around the block while I worked up the nerve to treat myself to ice cream. Sometimes, there is too much choice. After looking over the dozens or options, I finally just picked one and enjoyed it.

I walked back to the hostel, taking an underground passageway which connects the subway to department stores and is essential for commuters during the bitter winters.

After chilling out for a while back in the hostel, my stomach started growling again and I wanted to head out for some ramen. The hostel has coupons for a couple of restaurants in the area, but as I went to grab the ramen coupon, I realized that today was their day off. My backup plan was a tonkatsu place I had passed the other day. It was kind of a fast food chain, but looked pretty cheap and delicious. It was. It’s sad to think that I might not have another opportunity to eat tonkatsu before I leave.

I spent another hour or two back in the hostel trying to fix the file system on my external harddrive. I finally found one piece of software that might be able to do the trick, though I’m not quite sure how. I can access the underlying files and copied a few movies onto my computer. I was still hankering to watch a movie, but as I was moving a few onto a thumb drive, a huge group of Koreans came into the hostel. Seriously, there were 30 or so all traveling together (a school trip of some sort). They cleared out while I was looking around a supermarket for some microwave popcorn (which I couldn’t find).

The thumb drive did work with the TV, but the TV didn’t quite have the right drivers installed, so the only movie that could play had some problems with the sound. C’est la vie. It was actually getting pretty late by that point, so I gave up on watching a movie.

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Tram	200
Soup Curry & Coffee	1100
Ropeway (round trip)	1500
Parfait (“Treasure Hunter”)	1250
Apple tea	100
Tonkatsu w/ Miso sauce	630
Cheetos	91
Total:	4871 JPY (328.8 RMB) (USD 47.55)

Running Total: 39164.1 RMB (USD 5663.32)
Daily Average: 326.3 RMB (USD 47.19)

The ferry reached the port of Tomakomai at about 10:30 in the morning. I didn’t need to rush because the bus to Sapporo was scheduled for 11:45. So, I hung out in the cabin for a bit to avoid the huge mass of people rushing to get down to their cars in the hold. While hanging out, I struck up a conversation with a pair of European backpackers who also happened to be staying in said cabin. They were really winging the trip and spent the time waiting for the bus immersed in their phones trying to figure out plans: any hostels? any couchsurfing hosts? any campgrounds? etc. When it was time to get on the bus, they were still stuck in their indecisiveness, almost willing to wait for the next bus. I had to tell them there wasn’t a next bus and to go ahead and just take it into Tomakomai where they could find a train or bus to wherever they eventually decided to go.

It was about 90 minute ride to Sapporo and I walked from the train station down to my hostel. When I had booked it, I was under the impression that it was very central, but it turned out to be much further out than I thought. Sapporo is quite a big and spread out city, so in the larger scheme of things that assessment was correct. Anyways, its a great hostel with huge beds and all the amenities one could theoretically wish for. I checked straight in and hung out in the lounge, drinking coffee and charging my electronics. I wasn’t in a rush to go out and do any sightseeing. I’m still not.

In the late afternoon, I decided to go for a run, but that didn’t go so well. The blocks are short and the lights are timed to make one wait. Run 30 meters, wait 30 seconds, run 30 meters, wait 30 seconds. Odori Park, a long stretch of green in the heart of the city was also hosting a handful of festivals with white tents set up to sell barbecue, booze, and ramen. Between the crowds of revelers and the traffic lights, I quickly gave up on exercising.

After showering and dressing, I went to the lobby to ask about dinner recommendations, but saw a sign advertising a free pizza party. Well, that was convenient. The Brazilian guy working the front desk still gave me lots of recommendations about food and offered to head over to the party together when he finished his shift. To kill time, I popped over to a grocery store to buy some stuff for breakfast.

At 7:30, F and I went over to the other hostel where the event was taking place. It was only a block away. There was quite a crowd waiting around for their free pizzas while a team of people were hard at work prepping dough. I was so hungry and crestfallen at the realization that it was going to be at least another hour before any food would be ready. Being a party, lots of people were drinking, and after wavering a bit, I ran over to a convenience store to grab a six-pack of cheap imported beer. It was a good party and I met lots of people from all over the world. Because there were only two ovens and four groups of people, we only got a pizza once every 25 minutes. They were small pizzas and divided up among 7 people, so though I probably ate quite a lot of food over the course of the evening, I never felt full. So, when the party ended, I readily agreed with the suggestion to get ramen.

Five of us headed over to a ramen shop which had about 30 people queued up outside the door. We might have waited if there wasn’t some high pitched buzzing sound that was very unpleasant. Ramen is ramen, but Sapporo takes its ramen seriously. We found another shop that was less crowded, but still quite good. I was back and in bed by midnight.

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Bus to Sapporo	1310
Hostel (6 nights)	889 RMB
Groceries (bread, jam, eggs)	303
Beer	498
Ramen	850
Total:	1093.3 RMB (USD 158.44)

Running Total: 38577.1 RMB (USD 5590.6)
Daily Average: 326.9 RMB (USD 47.38)

Sendai appeared on my radar because of the marathon, which if I had managed to sign up for in time would have meant me being in the city two weeks ago. Nevertheless, despite the time crunch requiring me to skip most of Honshu, I figured it was worth popping into Tohoku’s main city. The overnight bus was not the best with my seat front and center, but I managed to catch some zzz’s before we arrived at the Sendai train station at 6am. Japan is so bright. I really don’t understand how the sun just seems so much stronger here than anywhere else.

I was about to head to a Family Mart to get some coffee and kill some time on the internet, but I saw a McDonald’s. I ordered a Mega McMuffin (which I’ve never seen before: double sausage patty, egg, cheese, and a slice of bacon) and killed two hours there. I wouldn’t be able to check in to my guesthouse until 4pm and it was out in the suburbs anyways, so I still had a whole day to kill. I found the coin lockers in the train station to lighten my load and just wandered west, following the shopping arcades which were only full of people rushing to work.

I found a public park, which was a little run down looking, but found a shady spot under a tree and laid out my picnic blanket to take a nap. To keep my phone charged, I positioned the solar panel in the sunlight. I didn’t fall asleep, but it was good to lay down flat for a while.

Sendai has a couple of museums and stuff, but after gorging on museums in Tokyo, I don’t really want to shell out for any admission tickets for a while. The only real site to see is the ruins of Sendai’s castle, which is basically just a hill to climb. There were some views of the city, so that was nice. I was rapidly getting bored, and needed to find something to do. I looked up recommended restaurants in the Lonely Planet, and decided to try a local delicacy: charcoal grilled cow tongue. It was delicious. Finally, I wandered around the shopping arcades again until I found a Starbucks, where I parked for a couple hours drinking iced coffee.

At four, I headed back to the train station, grabbed my stuff and hopped on a line out to the suburbs to find my guesthouse. The family-run guesthouse had a B&B vibe to it and the owners were very friendly. I decided to pay the extra 700 yen for the home cooked dinner and went out for a jog.

After showering, I hung out in the dining room downstairs studying a bit of Japanese until it was dinner time. I had been thinking of availing myself of the in-house bar, but was a little put off by another guest who had her two sons with her (ages 2 and 5). They and an elderly couple as well as a German cyclist circled round the table for the dinner. It was quite good: raw tuna and this other kind of tiny fish on a rice bowl with pickles and a vegetable soup. I didn’t join in the Japanese conversation, and ate my food quickly and quietly. I was still a bit hungry afterwards and quite conflicted about whether I should do my usual post-dinner snack run and whether I wanted to drink or not.

Eventually, I caved in and headed up the street to the little supermarket to “have a look.” I grabbed a package of kimchi that was marked down 50%, a bottle of Japanese whisky, and a bottle of soda water. Back at the guesthouse, the old Japanese man was trying a flight of local sake, and several other guests were drinking beers. The table had a huge bag of snacks on it. After putting her kids to bed, the mom drank too. There was a lot of drinking going on, but I didn’t quite feel at ease.

I ended up going to bed fairly early.

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McDonald’s	550
Pasmo topup	1000
Gyutan Set Meal	1598
Starbucks	604
Guesthouse (1 night)	2500
Dinner	700
Whisky and Kimchi	815
Total:	7767 JPY (535.9 RMB) (USD 77.66)

Running Total: 36657.5 RMB (USD 5312.5)
Daily Average: 316 RMB (USD 45.8)

Tuesday was my last day in Tokyo, but not my last day of the Grutto pass. With a flight booked out of Sapporo on the 31st, I was running out of days to move north. While I would have enjoyed another week in Tokyo, I had figured out a way to travel north without paying a fortune in train tickets and hitting a couple of destinations on the way to Hokkaido. Copious amounts of research had discovered night buses to Sendai and an overnight ferry from Sendai to a port on Hokkaido. Though that was the tentative plan, until I had tickets in my hand, I couldn’t exactly rest easy. And, I certainly can’t afford tickets unless I get some Japanese yen.

So, my first order of business, after packing my luggage and moving it to the storage room was to find the Tokyo branch of the ICBC and see if they had any relevant advice regarding my ATM woes. The ICBC was in a nondescript building across the street from the Imperial Palace. I had literally been there exactly one week ago and missed it in the cloudy intermittently drizzling morning.

Apparently, Tuesday is rain day in Tokyo, but this was no mere drizzle. If it was the end of summer, I would swear we were in a typhoon. Wind blew sheets of rain from every angle, while the stronger gusts, possibly augmented by the shapes of the skyscrapers utterly wrecked the fragile metal frames of lesser umbrellas. Despite periods of lighter rain, the overall effect was a complete drenching.

The ICBC was fruitless, though friendly. They confirmed what I had feared: my chip-based card is utterly useless in Japan. I asked about currency exchange. They didn’t handle a cash business there, but suggested I try the Bank of China around the block. The BoC had a paper sign saying they cancelled foreign cash transactions last year. Plan Z was to find a “smart exchange” machine advertised at the front desk of the hostel. There was one in the Tokyo train station, which also happened to be right there. So, the advertisement purported a coupon for a better rate via a QR code, which I dutifully saved on my phone, but the machine had no way to read said QR code. Aren’t there laws about bait-and-switch or how about just the baseline 10+% margins on the exchange rates? I plugged all my US money in because the rate was slightly less usurious, but still had to eat some of the horrendous exchange rate on the RMB. Who would have thought that the bad rate I got off the boat in Fukuoka was actually a decent rate after all?

There were a couple of museums near the train station which I figured I should visit since I was in no rush to get to Yokohama. The Mitsuo Aida Museum, located in a convention center, was surprisingly nice. Mitsuo Aida was a poet and calligrapher, and all of the poems had English translations on the accompanying placards. The brushstrokes were bold and uninhibited, but still mostly readable to my untrained eye, while the poems themselves were succinct and koan-like. Literally, the first said (paraphrase) “When it rains, be in the rain. When the wind blows, be in the wind.” How did he know there was a pseudo-typhoon happening outside?

I went to the Intermediatheque next. It was located in a shopping mall and is always free admission. I was expecting some sort of modern exercise in multimedia artworks, but it was actually more of a natural history museum as curated by artists. It had a 19th century Industrial Revolution/colonialist vibe with skeletons and taxidermied animals kept in antique display cases. I don’t if it is better to describe it as gothic or steampunk, but it had a very Victorian air to it. But, again, despite being antique scientific equipment and tons of specimens from the natural world, the arrangements were presented to be aesthetically arresting. Definitely worth repeat visits.

On the way back to the hostel, and with water squishing in my shoes, I popped into the Mitsui Memorial Museum, which was located on the seventh floor of a historic bank building. There were mostly Buddhist artworks and such. I made a pretty quick pass through, and was thinking about getting a spot of lunch at the hostel and working on my computer while drying off for a while.

However, when I returned to the hostel, I found they had a lunch rush, which precluded me spreading out and lounging for a couple hours. I grabbed my stuff and hobbled over to the train station to go directly to Yokohama. On the bright side, I caught an express train, got a seat, and didn’t need to transfer.

I got off at Yokohama station and wandered around for a bit, trying to find a JR Bus ticket window to buy my bus ticket for the following night. I eventually backtracked from the bus terminal to the train station to inquire at the tourist information desk, which notified me that there was no ticket office. I would have to book the ticket via phone, online, or at a service terminal in a convenience store. They directed me to a 7-Eleven two floors down which didn’t have said service terminal. God, these tourist information desks are pretty consistently unhelpful. I found a Lawson’s and spent close to 20 minutes trying to figure out how to find the bus route I knew existed. It didn’t help that the terminal was only available in Japanese, but I guess I’ve picked up enough reading ability that it didn’t really hinder me as much as the bad user interface. The bus routes were indexed under prefecture names, not city names.

I thought about plopping down at the Starbucks next door to rest a bit, but figured I would try my luck checking into the hostel an hour early so I could actually change into dry clothes and start some laundry. I was getting pretty desperate for clean clothes, having never hit the right window of having ready cash and time to wait around for the washing machine in Tokyo.

It was a pretty nice hostel with a spacious dorm room only occupied by one other person, so I took the liberty of spreading out a bit. I started the laundry and made a cup of coffee and sat down in the living room to work on my computer. There were a couple guests hanging out in the living room, but they were all speaking to each other in Japanese. It was actually quite weird how there was an old man getting a massage from a female guest and middle aged woman hanging out. The old man turned out to be my roommate and he got pissy with me for using a bit of rope to make a temporary clothesline that he had to duck under to access his locker, which he did every ten fucking minutes. The guy really set off my spidey sense, always keeping his backpack with him, sneaking around, and keeping a large stack of postal boxes.

It seemed I didn’t have much better luck socially in this hostel, so I headed out alone at dinner time to wander around in adjacent Chinatown. Yokohama is another historic port city of Japan and has a sizable Chinese population. After more than a hundred years of having between 3-5000 Chinese residents, the Chinese population had shot up to 20,000 since 1995 (I hope I’m remembering that correctly. I saw it later in a museum that banned photography). Needless to say, as I wandered Chinatown I overheard lots of Chinese, but its so annoying to get approached in English by the restaurant touts, especially when I was wearing a shirt with Chinese on it.

A lot of the restaurants advertised all-you-can-eat deals which sounded pretty tempting, but I had the vague suspicion that the unwritten fine print is that you need 2 or 3 people at the table. Other than that, most of the restaurants advertised set meals with various combinations of rice, noodles, and dimsum. It is really hard to decide what to eat when pretty much everywhere has virtually the same menu and similar prices. I must have spent more than an hour looking every restaurant over three or four times before just going for one. The food was alright, but it didn’t satisfy me. So, once again, I swung by a supermarket for a little post-dinner snacks and beer.

I hung out in the hostel living room while the old man watched some stupid television program about the right and wrong ways to sit down. He lit up when the middle aged woman with curlers in her hair came in and they started conversing. Another fellow who came in the room asked if he could chat with me. He was Taiwanese, but had lived in Japan for a long time. I never even told him I could speak Chinese.

When I finished my beer, I jumped in the shower and got ready for bed.

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Pasmo top-up	1000
Chicken (Lawsons)	170
Hostel (1 night)	124.88 RMB
Sweet and Sour Pork	950
Snacks	605
Total:	299.28 RMB (USD 43.28)

Running Total: 35563.6 RMB (USD 5143.93)
Daily Average: 312 RMB (USD 45.12)

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For the record, I saved another 2100 yen on museum admissions with the Grutto Pass.

I bought an additional 46,659 yen for 2100 RMB + 160 USD (or 3206 RMB equivalent) for a new personal exchange rate of 6.9 (starting the next day). In other words, every 100 yen I spend now costs an additional 0.5 RMB, i.e. everything is 7% more expensive in real terms.

I’m not sure if it is universal, but museums in China and Japan are typically closed on Mondays (barring some national holiday that shifts the “rest day”). So, for my last day in Tokyo, I had to exercise a little creativity. The first order of business was to go to the Sumo stadium by 7:30 am when the ticket sales began. After a quick walk there in the bright sunlight, I was blinded by the sheer number of people already lined up, wrapped around the building and stretching out into the horizon. People must have shown up at 6 or even earlier to get on line. What the hell?! It wasn’t encouraging that at least three quarters of the line was composed of obvious tourists. While sumo wrestling would be interesting to experience, the idea of an entire stadium of gaijin is a bit off putting. On to plan B.

There were a few places covered by the Grutto Pass that are open on Mondays. The only problem is that they are a little far flung. Doing quick back of the envelope math, I decided to would be worthwhile to invest in a 1-day transit pass covering Tokyo Metro, Toei, and JR lines. I headed over to Tsujiki Market to kill a little. This is the famous market that people go to at 3am for a chance to watch tuna auctions. I had no interest in that, but had been thinking about getting there by 7 one day to find the fruit auctions. I was a bit late for either, and wondered about, kicking myself for having already eaten a breakfast when the market was essentially set up as a tourist trap selling expensive meals. It was overrun with foreigners as well.

Since the nearby Hama-Rikyu Gardens didn’t open until 9am, I had plenty of time to kill and located one more Aeon Bank ATM to confirm that my card does not work. I didn’t have any cash on me, but a couple money changers I passed advertised terrible rates.

The Tokyo bay adjacent gardens were nice and I covered them with a quick loop before heading over to the nearest station which provided direct access to the Mirakan (Museum of Emerging Technology). However, when I tried to swipe myself into the elevated train, I discovered that my pass didn’t work. I forgot that apart from two major subway operators, there are a handful of private rail lines in Tokyo. It’s a mess to have so many independent companies operating public transport. One “station” on the map is often several mutually unconnected stations of the same name. It would have been an extra 300 something yen to go a couple stops on that line. Completely ridiculous.

I decided to mix up the itinerary and head out to the Tokyo Sea Life Park, which is only accessible by JR line and almost as far out of town as Disney Land. The aquarium had several smallish hammerhead sharks, and apart from a couple of school groups was much quieter than the typical tourist favorites. To reach the Miraikan without shelling out more cash for transportation, I was able to get on a Toei operated bus outside the neareast JR station.

I was expecting the Miraikan to be super crowded, but it wasn’t. I got there just in time to watch the Asimo presentation. Asimo is the Honda-built robot. I think we are already on the 8th generation or so because I can remember news footage from however long ago. Asimo was crazy, as were the other handful of robots on display at the museum, including the baby seal one. The museum had displays explaining high tech material science, quantum computing, a module from the International Space Station, and lots of other fascinating interactive stuff. The “future medicine” exhibited included a hands-on laparoscopic surgery simulation.

As I was making good time, I knew of one more museum open on Monday. It was actually near the gardens I went to first. On the subway, I wasn’t paying attention and missed my stop. However, instead of going back, I kept on to Ginza so I could walk through that neighborhood on the way to the museum. I popped into a Family Mart just around the corner from the museum for a little snack.

The Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art is in an office building, and it felt weird to walk around in my shorts and sandals while various business people were going about their business. The exhibit was completely dedicated to some 19th century French painter whose name has already escaped me. It was a loan from his museum in Paris, but it seems they didn’t send over the good stuff. Most of the paintings looked unfinished and a fair number of them were preliminary sketches or other practice runs for a later piece.

I was pretty tired by this point, and took the subway back to the hostel to rest up a bit. I still had the unlimited subway pass, so I figured I should try to go to some more places at night. Of course, I also wanted to avoid the height of the evening rush hour, so I killed a bit of time at the hostel. I did grab a drink, and joined a group of backpackers who were pregaming for a concert. Around 7, I took off to go to Ikebukuro, which is pretty far to the northwest of town, and I’m still not sure what exactly is so special about it, other than being mentioned by name in Duolingo. I wondered around the streets to the west of the train station looking at the dining options, eventually grabbing a rice bowl. The restaurant’s namesake dish was quite tasty, offering three kinds of meat. I was bored and didn’t feel like spending tons of time on the subway just to make the pass worthwhile. So, I took a direct train to Akihabara, walked around a bit and headed back to the hostel on foot. Even when free, it is still better to walk then go one stop on public transport. Of course, that gave me the opportunity to pick up another snack on the way. I think my eating is getting out of control.

There were people in the cafe at the hostel, but it was really quite quiet. Apart from one person at the bar, everyone else was playing on their phone or computer. I watched a couple of Youtube videos, then went to bed.

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Breakfast (bread)	267
Metro Pass	1590
Ice cream	140
FM Mapo tofu & milk tea	526
Drink	116
Chikara Meshi (rice bowl)	680
Beer and chicken wings	600
Total:	3919 JPY (250.8 RMB) (USD 36.31)

Running Total: 35264.3 RMB (USD 5106)
Daily Average: 312 RMB (USD 45.19)

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Despite being “not a museum day,” I still saved 2620 yen in free admission to the four sites. Without the pass, I probably still would have sprung for the Miraikan. I think it might have cost about the same amount in transportation to go without the pass. Considering the average fare is about 200 yen, it takes a lot of running around town to make it worthwhile.

I didn’t have any particularly onerous plans for Sunday, deciding I needed a bit of rest from the monomaniacal museum mission, so I was hanging around a bit in the morning. The Australian guy came down just as I was packing up my computer to head out. I had met him the other night when I was drinking a beer outside the hostel. He had just landed in Tokyo with a JR Pass burning a hole in his pocket, but decided to stick around an extra day (or two) before shooting down to Hiroshima. He had gone to the festival at Sensoji, which the French girl whom I haven’t mentioned yet made a special trip about. He reiterated pretty much everything she had told me the last night. Very crowded, lots of energy, amazing experience, exciting to watch a large group of people carry an altar around. The videos and pictures shown to me didn’t convince me to go add it to my plans. Anyways, the Australian guy also talked about how he randomly met some Japanese people at the festival and went out drinking with them for a couple hours in hole-in-the-wall izakayas. Lucky him.

I went over to a Denny’s–yes, Japan has Denny’s, it’s insane–for a spot of “Sunday brunch.” The breakfast sets were reasonably priced but pretty a pretty awful simulation of American food. One slice of limp bacon, one tiny sausage, scrambled eggs (which were good), a salad (for some reason), and a pancakes instead of toast (that’s a nice bonus). The coffee was served in the tiniest mug, and when I saw the massive mugs used to serve lattes to the table next to me, I was seriously like wtf about the situation. One of the waitresses did come by once proactively to add a little coffee via pipette.

Deciding Denny’s wasn’t really a good place to while away an hour on my computer, I returned to the hostel before setting out for the day. I took my backpack with my computer and headed over to Shinjuku. I had discovered there were two museums in my Grutto pass in the area, but got off the subway a couple stations early in order to walk through the heart of Shinjuku. There was a shrine mentioned in the Lonely Planet with a Sunday flea market, so I went a whole 50 meters out of my way to take a gander. There was, in fact, a bit of a flea market going on, though there were no more than 8 vendors with their “modern antiques” and various other curiosities laid out. All of the visitors were white and I didn’t loiter.

I zigzaged my way over to the Metropolitan Government Building, which has a free observatory on a top floor. There was quite a queue to get in the elevator going up, but I made good use of my time by reviewing Japanese on my phone. I noticed that the two whities in front of me were in deep conversation with a Japanese girl. It’s strange, I have been noticing more and more that foreign tourists all seem to have their own personal Japanese tour guides hanging out with them. I wonder if I smell bad or something.

Though the air quality monitor said that pollution levels were at record lows, the horizon was hidden by a bit of haze. At least, Mt Fuji was not viewable, though it can reportedly be seen on a clear day. The line for the elevator to go down was quicker. Of course, I stopped to look at some memorabilia for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the atrium. It’s funny how I seem to “just” miss all the Olympics (which seriously are always in Asia these days): Beijing in 2008, Pyeongchang in 2018, Tokyo in 2020, Beijing again in 2022.

I finally headed over to the two target museums, which are both housed in a building called Opera City (there was a ticket counter for symphony performances, so I guess it wasn’t a misnomer), only stopping twice to try ATMs. I’m getting increasingly worried about the cash situation, and spent some time researching ATMs in Japan which can accept chip-based bank cards. The tip was to try Aeon Bank. Still, no luck.

The Art Gallery in the Tokyo Opera City was quite interesting. The main exhibition was a video by an American artist who recreated a Japanese tea ceremony with all the sort of bricabrac that modern artists use to build “sculptures.” After watching the video, all the sets and props were laid out in the galleries for us to examine up close. The permanent collection (a donated private collection) was fine, but what was most interesting is that the final hallway was a showcase for child artists. Seeing the juxtaposition of a few abstract expressionist paintings (which how many critics complain that their children could do?) followed by actual paintings by children really highlight how bullshit that complaint is.

I was getting pretty hungry so I headed down to the basement to peruse the food court. I went for a sandwich at Subways, and I feel good about that decision. It was a little pricey (especially as I somehow know the advertisement jingle “five dollar foot longs” despite a ten year American media diet), but I got the most “Japanese” sandwich imaginable–teriyaki chicken with soy sauce and wasabi as the dressing. Maybe I should have gone for the avocado sandwich.

The NTT-InterCommunicationCenter was amazing. Unfortunately, the present exhibition was free admission regardless of my Grutto Pass, so I don’t get to tally any additional savings there. There wasn’t a lot of “art” on display, but everything was multimedia and interactive. A lot of it eludes description, but I was blown away by some of the stuff in there.

Finished with the museums, I was prepared to spend the afternoon in the park, though I needed to swing by a grocery store to pick up a drink and some snacks. It wasn’t a far walk to this giant wooded park, which was mostly the grounds of the Shinto Shrine as well as a martial arts dojo. Groups of people were out practicing their staff work or archery. I found a space on a lawn amidst dozens of picnickers, laid out my sheets, and took a nap. When I woke up, and was snacking on some potato chips and a Dr. Pepper, I noticed a loudspeaker announcement saying that these were sacred grounds and all forms of recreation are forbidden. No one seemed the least bit fazed. Sure, there is a temple somewhere in the woods, but it might as well be a million miles away.

Getting restless, or feeling a little guilty, I packed up to walk around and actually see the Meiji Shrine. It was packed with tourists, and as I entered one of the side gates, I stumbled across a wedding procession. I felt bad that everyone had their phones out recording. Having entered via a backway, I exited through the main entrance. A section of the path is flanked by a wall of sake jars and a wall of Bordeaux barrels all donated for consecration purposes or something like that. Shintoism is weird.

The park I was really looking for is adjacent but not connected, so after swinging around on the streetside, I found the real party. The concentration of picnickers was ten times as dense, street performers staked out their corners, and merriment filled the air. Without even doing a loop of the garden, I decided I might want some refreshments of a more adult nature, but shied away from buying slightly marked up but still reasonably priced beer from the official snack carts. My stinginess was actually a good thing, as I crossed a pedestrian bridge heading south out of the park right into the middle of a street music festival where various stages competed for one’s attention while people were seriously pounding down alcohol.

I carried on to a 7-11 to restock and passed back through the street festival. I could have stopped there, but since I had a picnic blanket, I would prefer to lay on the grass than stand around or sit on a concrete bench. Heading back into the park, the only issue was were to stake my claim. Ideally, I would be near other drinkers so that would maximize my chance of socializing, but ultimately I picked a nice partially shady spot next to a pond with a pair of fountains. I drank in peace and quiet, enjoying nature and meditating on life. I found contentment in my solitude and didn’t mind the gusts of wind or occasional stray rain drops.

After the sun fell behind the trees, I decided to leave the park. As I walked in a state of satori, I noticed that I must have been moving very slowly because people were constantly overtaking me. It didn’t perturb me, and I continued to hold on to the state of perfect awareness. The neighborhoods to the east of the park, Harajuke, are well-known as a fashionable shopping paradise. Figuring, I might as well check off another item from the list of Tokyo “sites”, I grabbed a roadie from a Family Mart and continued to ride the wind up and down the streets with various boutique retailers.

Reaching the next subway stop, I alighted to return to my neighborhood. Despite all the snacking, I figured I still might need a proper dinner, so I popped into a Coco’s Curry House and tried a hashed beef (hayashi rice). I still prefer curry, but figured it was good to mix it up.

Back in the hostel, I got into a conversation with a Canadian digital nomad. It was more like an interview because he kept asking questions and I chattered away about myself despite a few feeble attempts to steer the conversation away from me. Getting thirsty, I ordered a drink from the bar, finally having Japanese sake (first time this trip). It was properly served with the glass overflowing into a saucer that catches the extra sake. We continued talking for a while, but the sunlight and alcohol were quickly catching up on me. After losing the fight against the yawns, I begged his pardon and retired for the night.

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Denny’s	592
Subway	486
Snacks	373
Ice Cream (Ministop Peach softee)	120
7-Eleven booze and peanuts	633
Family Mart drink	207
Hashed Beef	629
Sake	300
Total:	3340 JPY (213.76 RMB) (USD 30.97)

Running Total: 35013.5 RMB (USD 5072.8)
Daily Average: 312.6 RMB (USD 45.29)

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So, the Grutto Pass only got me free admission into one museum, but it was an expensive one valued at 1400 yen.

There were several museum in Ueno Park that I wanted to visit, but would have only saved 100 yen here or there on their admission ticket prices with my Grutto Pass. However, somewhere along the line (back in Nara, actually) I became aware of a thing called “International Museum Day,” and having dutifully checked the websites of Tokyo National Museum, The National Museum of Western Art (which I learned about from the Kawasaki exhibit), and the National Museum of Nature and Science to confirm that all three were honoring the holiday by offering free admission. For good measure, I added the Ueno Royal Museum to the list. Unfortunately, the Klimt exhibit was only offering a discount equivalent to the Grutto Pass for Museum Day, so it was a no go.

With the earliest museum opening at 9:30, I had plenty of time in the morning to putz around and walk the twenty something minutes up to the general area. I passed by the Western Art Museum to start at the Science Museum, and was surprised to see the line of people waiting to get in despite there still being nearly an hour until it opened. I figured I was going to have to put up with huge crowds throughout the day, but I saw that as an ominous sign.

I walked straight in to the Science Museum, and while I was disoriented about where to go–there are two separate buildings, one specializing in Japan, the other not–I popped straight into a cinematic experience in a 360-degree theater. I’m not exaggerating about the 360 degrees. The theater was a sphere with the audience standing on a narrow platform between two sets of doors. I worked my way through every hall of the science museum at a brisk pace to soak it all in. Highlights include the old telescopes, clocks, and other historic scientific instruments in one hall, the nearly complete fossil of a triceratops, and the cloud chamber where one can background radiation in real time. (Incidentally, I had just listened to a RadioLab episode about cosmic rays and they were talking about a cloud chamber, so it was cool to see one in person). I took regular breaks to sit down for a few minutes and preserve my standing energy because milling about museums is far more tiring than walking long distances.

I headed over to the Museum of Western Art, where one had to queue to get an entrance tickeet. I got my ticket, then decided that I should grab a spot of lunch first, so I wandered over to the train/subway station area to find a cheap bowl of noodles. I had cold soba with a sesame sauce. It was nice and not too filling. While I was in the area, I also found a Big Camera store to finally track down the 500MB IIJ Mobile recharge card to keep my data service valid until the end of my trip. I was starting to debate whether to just go Wi-Fi only for the last 10 or so days, but figured it would be helpful.

Going back into Ueno Park, I stopped by the Ueno Royal Museum first to find that the current exhibit had free admission anyways, so I could have gone there on my last visit to the area. The exhibit was mostly massive monochrome ink paintings of European cities. It was pretty nice, and I had a long sit in one of the nicely air conditioned rooms.

I headed back to the Museum of Western Art and after dutifully snapping a couple pictures of the famous Rodin sculptures in the front garden, i.e. the Thinker and the Gates of Hell, headed straight in. The permanent exhibit occupied less than half of the floor space, but it was an impressive collection. As I should have already stated, the founder of Kawasaki started collecting western art to help Japan “modernize” its art scene during the Meiji restoration and this Museum is the by-product of his efforts. There was an entire room just of Monet, maybe 20 paintings, and the other rooms contained a veritable who’s who of the western cannon.

The museum was fairly crowded, which helped me move a bit slower and soak in the high culture, but I had one more museum to hit and it was the main one. The Tokyo National Museum is the museum if you are just going to do one. The Museum consists four separate buildings and a garden. The main building focuses on Japan, but I hit the Asian building first, which covers all non-Japanese Asian countries. Obviously, there was a lot of Chinese stuff, but it stretched as far as India and Egypt in its inclusiveness. The museum galleries were various historical artifacts, mostly selected for their aesthetic value. I was slightly disappointed, especially in the Japan building, to find that the overarching emphasis of the museum mission was to present the artifacts as art rather than historical record. One can glean a lot of history from the National Museums of China and Korea, but I learned nothing from Japan. A third building, which mainly housed a special exhibit, had a permanent exhibit on archaeology, which had a few notes on history, but neither told a story nor painted a picture of Japan’s historical development.

The middle of Ueno Park had a festival going on with two lines of white tents selling all kinds of drinks and snacks. Before entering the National Museum, I took a stroll through but didn’t nosh on anything. I was impressed by how many people were sitting around eating skewers and chugging alcohol. There were booths selling craft beer and dozens of kinds of sake. I was planning to drink that day, but didn’t want to get trashed before going into the museum. On the way out of the museum, I still gave the pop-up market a wide berth. It was still high afternoon, but I was ready to go back to the hostel. I decided to save myself some effort and hopped on the subway back.

I chilled until dinner time, where I walked up to Akihabara to find a Saizeriya’s, which is a Japanese chain of cheap Italian restaurants. I used to love going to it in Shenzhen and it was a treat I had been looking forward to since I stepped on the shore at Fukuoka. There was a location in Nara, teasing me every day as I passed it by. I ordered a ton of food (margherita pizza, grilled asparagus, pasta, a cast iron plate with chicken, corn, and potatoes, a piece of flatbread) and a half-liter carafe of red wine. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to get caught up on my mobile phone, mindlessly nibbling away the feast. I realized I had finished everything without really experiencing any of it and I was disappointed in myself. So I ordered a plate of chicken wings to eat while finishing the wine, but it was a minor consolation prize.

Back in the hostel, it was quiet again. There were parties of people on Wednesday and Thursday night, but as soon as I start drinking again and on Friday/Saturday, not a soul to be seen. I was finally starting to see some fellow backpackers at odd intervals, stopping to chat for five minutes as one of us was on the way in or out, but still the anti-social atmosphere of the hostel continued. I hung out in the cafe, furtively drinking a bit more and hoping for something to happen, but ultimately gave up and went up to bed.

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Apple danish	84
Cold soba	420
SIM recharge	1500
Beverage — Salty Lichi	118
Saizeriya	2413
Alcohol	275
Total:	4810 JPY (307.8 RMB) (USD 44.6)

Running Total: 34799.8 RMB (USD 5041.8)
Daily Average: 313.5 RMB (USD 45.42)

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There is a question as to whether I should count the free admission from Museum Day as part of my Grutto savings. The three museums normally cost 1920 yen. Grutto would have given me 100 yen off each (300 yen total). Either way, I definitely would have visited the Tokyo National Museum and the Museum of Western Art, and was happy to both save an additional 900 yen by planning out my museum visits strategically and being also able to visit the science museum, which is actually worth a visit.

I started by taking the subway a couple blocks north (it was definitely walkable, but didn’t want to exhaust myself at the start) to Asakuna, where sits the Senso-ji Temple, reportedly one of Tokyo’s busiest. Despite being barely 8 am, the place was fairly and the whole street walking up to the temple was lined with booths. Fortunately, it was still early and the booths were just barely getting set up for the day, otherwise it would have been a nightmare to visit. I later learned, that Friday (today) was the first day of a three day weekend at the temple. Given my aversion to crowds, I did well to swing by before the festival kicked into high gear. The temple itself was impressive, but after lighting some incense and looking around perfunctorily, I took off.

I headed over to the Sumida River to walk along the riverside, enjoying the view of a few notable buildings on the other bank, such as the Tokyo Sky Tree and the Suntory Brewery, which has a golden (turd-shaped) flame sculpture on its top.

I was heading to the sword museum, but as I was a bit early, I took a brief stroll through a neighboring garden and walked over to the Sumo Wrestling hall on the next block to see what was up. So, I was smack dab in the middle of a two week sumo wrestling tournament with matches going on everyday. One could reasonably buy a ticket and hang out inside for as long as they wanted. Unfortunately, they were already sold out for the day.

The sword museum was nice, but utterly failed to adequately teach anything about the differences between the various samurai swords. Despite the current exhibit being designed to teach about the “shapes” of the swords, I couldn’t see any difference in curvatures across 1000 years of swords.

There were two other museums in the neighborhood, so I hurried over to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which turned out to be massive. This is definitely a must-visit museum and throngs of tourists were everywhere in the cavernous, elevated museum. Entire city blocks of structures were recreated inside the museum, which covered in detail every aspect of life in the Edo period of Tokyo, from how water was delivered and the finer points of the economic systems to how sushi was larger in the past and the rice had a reddish hue from the vinegar. The museum also covered the Meiji restoration and modern eras in only slightly less detail. One could easily spend 5-6 hours trying to read every sign, all rendered in Japanese and English in print but with computer terminals at various points providing translations in Korean, Chinese, French, Spanish and a dozen other languages. It was a sensory and information overload, so at some point I powered down and took it in holistically. I could go on and on about the museum, but it is better to just experience it in person.

The next museum was dedicated to an artist I thought I was unfamiliar with–Sumida Hokusai–but learned is the creator of the 36 views of Mt Fuji and countless other famous ukiyo-e prints. The permanent exhibit (to which my Grutto Pass entitled free admission) only occupied about 15% of the floor space of the museum, but it was still a sufficient exhibition with tons of art work and interactive terminals providing lots of information about the artist’s life and works.

Three more museums arranged like a southern constellation were within walking distance. I headed to the furthest one–The Museum of Contemporary Art–first. On the way, I passed a Ministop and bought a peach-flavored soft-serve ice cream because it was on sale to introduce the limited-run flavor. That served as my lunch. I’ve been popping into quite a few convenience stores because I am running low on cash and trying to find an ATM that works with my bank card and my 30-day data is about to expire unless I buy more to top it up.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, sits in the corner of an enormous park that I didn’t bother walking around. The art was a bit modern for my taste with installations and book length explanations for each piece.

The next museum was the Fukagawa Edo Museum. Fukagawa is the name of the neighborhood, which was quite prosperous in Edo times. There are still Buddhist temples on every block. The small museum was basically just a Colonial Williamsburg, recreating a whole village with volunteers on hand to explain things if needed. I just looked around a bit and enjoyed the virtual sunset and rainy weather effects.

I paid a whopping 150 yen to visit the lovely Kiyosumi Gardens, which were halfway between the final two museums. It was quite nice, but I guess all these Japanese gardens are starting to look the same. The novelty has worn off, but they are all still serene places to stroll about.

I swung by the Basho Museum, which was really outside my domain. It was dedicated to a literary figure who did a fair amount of calligraphy, but whether it was my lack of understanding of context or the accumulated exhaustion, it all flew over my head and I was happy to be pushing on to walk back the kilometer and a half to the hostel.

It was still daylight and I was already back. It was wonderful. I popped over to a supermarket to get a snack and a can of beer to break my alcohol fast while I recharged my literal and metaphorical batteries. Getting hungry, I went back to the tonkatsu place and had an early dinner. I grabbed more beer and dessert (despite being satisfied) on the way back. Feeling bad about sneaking beers into the hostel, I ordered one drink at the bar as well.

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Breakfast	285
Peach ice cream	120
Kiyosumi Garden	150
Beer and snacks	573
Tonkatsu	950
Beer and chocolate cake	544
Ginger highball	300
Total:	2922 JPY (187 RMB) (USD 27.05)

Running Total: 34492 RMB (USD 4989.27)
Daily Average: 313.56 RMB (USD 45.36)

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I saved 3100 yen on the six museums not paying for admission to any of them.