This part of Hokkaido is famous for the Japanese crane, once thought extinct and now somewhat recovered. There'd been a pair around the hotel, but never when I had my camera. On the way to the airport we passed a pair right by the road... but not wanting to be accused of making us miss the flight, I didn't dare suggest stopping for a photo. Of course, we arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. D'oh.
The cranes we saw weren't doing the mating dance for which they are famous - but hey, if I'm stealing a photo it may as well be a good one.
So then there was the flight, and almost before we knew it, we were landing in Tokyo.
At first we thought this was Tokyo, but then we realised we weren't quite there yet. The sprawl, it stretches far.
We had been wondering what might have changed in the 11 years since we were last in the city... and discovered the first thing almost immediately: on the train, there were announcements in English! As well as in Chinese and Korean! Back in the day, it was only Japanese. (And actually this was something we noticed in Hokkaido - large numbers of Chinese and other Asian tourists.)
We spent quite a while at Tokyo Station looking for lockers in which to store our luggage. A very long, very hot while, lugging our suitcases and backpacks from one locker area to another around the enormous station complex, only to find all the lockers full each time. Finally we lined up for a luggage storage service ... and not too long afterwards were able to unburden ourselves.
The plan was to spend the afternoon around Asakusa, so we hopped on the metro... where Téo was enormously excited to see his first pair of white gloves.
Bus drivers wear white gloves.
Train drivers too. Téo counted 200 white gloves in total in the 2.5 days we were in Tokyo.
After a yummy lunch of tantanmen (ramen noodles with a meat sauce - the kids were highly suspicious at first but eventually admitted it was edible), we hit the streets. I had been looking forward to coming to Asakusa for years. Years! Why? Well, those of you who knew me in Australia may remember my blue glass plates, bought from Freedom Furniture in 1994. These are still our plates. We would like something new. Something cool. Like, square Japanese plates. And! In Asakusa there is a street of shops selling restaurant supplies. We'd both bought pottery bowls there when we lived in Japan, and our dream is to get some plates to go with them.
We looked.
And looked. Nothing. It was all cheap stuff from China, with nothing cool at all. Plus the area was full of foreigners. It's like it's now a tourist destination. Very disappointing.
But the kids at least saw some of the sights.
Interesting architecture.
Plastic food.
The golden poo.
Next up was Sensō-ji, the huge Buddhist temple in Asakusa.
The kids really liked getting water from the dragons.
We'd seen the new Tokyo Sky Tree while walking around, so the kids were badgering us to go up it. We'd heard the queues were super long, especially to go up for sunset, but since the skies were blue (quite rare in Tokyo in summer) and we had nothing else to do anyway, we figured we'd give it a go.
The Sky Tree from Asakusa...
...and from the bottom.
Upon arriving, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the queue was only 20 min. So, up we went... and were even more more pleasantly surprised to be able to see Mt. Fuji. We hung around a bit to watch the sunset.
I like the one yellow building.
After coming back down, we returned to Tokyo station to get our luggage, then headed to the apartment building of Yumi - a friend of C's from when he lived in Japan - her husband Satoshi and their son Daiki. The building has a guest room where we could stay - it was just like a hotel room, and perfect for us. Even though it's right near the centre of Tokyo, and pretty much all high rise buildings, the area was really quiet without many cars, and had a lovely neighbourhood feel. There was even a little festival going on when we arrived.
The festival
Walking in the quiet streets
After dropping off our luggage we walked down the street for dinner. There were lots of different restaurants to choose from - we ended up at a little yakitori place which, to our surprise, was run by a French guy.
The kids were fading by this point so after dinner it was straight to bed for them, and us not too far behind them.
