Rewind

Here are the daily updates for the last week of our trip:

Friday 15/08:
Head back up to the Iwami Ginzan silver mines, and this time actually go in. Do the tour of the smaller mine shaft, and enjoy the walk back through the bamboo forest. Visit a shrine perched high above the mine shaft. Lots of stairs!

Go back into Oda for a quick rest before dinner at the Osawa's.

We have a fantastic meal with way too much food. A huge dish of sahsimi, fried fish, grilled seafood, egg custard, soup, somen noodles, it just went on and on. So delicious!

Go to Eddah's apartment for a drink before calling it a night.

Saturday 16/08:
Say goodbye to Yoshimi and Yuko, who stopped by at the last minute. Hard to believe our time in Oda is already done!

Stop at a beautiful gorge on the drive from Oda to Hiroshima. Walked down the many stairs, then picked our way across the slippery rocks of the gorge to see a small shrine perched on the other side.

Continue driving all the way to Hiroshima. Grab a quick lunch, then walk through the Peace Park before heading for the airport.

At the airport, Pete has to check his walking stick, and then later his jacknife, which we find amusing. Domestic travel in Japan is so easy! You can bring liquids on board (as we did....), no one ever looked at our passports, Pete's jacknife which he accidentally left in his backpack was quickly put in an envelope to be checked. So accomodating!

Once in Tokyo, we drop our stuff off at Pete's and head out for dinner at TGIFridays. It's fairly late, and lots of stuff is closed because of obon.

Sunday 17/08:
Started out the day with a run around Ueno park, near Pete's place. The weather is drizzly and grey, but perfect for running. The park is beautiful, with an enormous pond full of lotus flowers.

Take the train to Shinjuku (area in Tokyo) and go up the Tokyo Goverment Building to the observation deck. Unfortunately the lousy weather meant that there wasn't much of a view.

Grab umbrellas and walk back towards the station to see if the Mexican Beer Garden is open (it's not). Meet up with Pete's friend Emi for a drink and then we all go for dinner at a fancy restaurant specializing in tofu. Delicious and beautiful food.

Monday 18/08:
Steve, Erik and I walk to Kappabashi-dori to look at all the kitchen ware and fake food stores. Very interesting, and I wish that we had another suitcase! Buy some chopsticks.

Visit Senso-ji temple in Asakasa. Huge temple with lots of incense. Peruse the busy souvenir stands surrounding the temple.

Go to the Asahi headquarters, a huge building designed to look like a pint of beer. Nothing to see there aside from the building, so we carry on back to the subway to go back to Shinjuku to try the Mexican beer garden again. We had great weather all day, and are very optimistic. Get completely turned around in the huge train station, and by the time we find the right roof top patio, it looks like it's going to start pouring. We are determined to enjoy some all you can eat/drink fun, so we tough it out, and luckily the weather cooperates. We had a great time, and all ate too much, and way too fast (two hour limit, we were worried the rain would force us out early).

After the beer garden we randomly decided to go bowling. We all got vending machine shoes and socks and had a great time.

Went back to Ueno for one last drink, then one last snack (the boys only, I couldn't believe they were still hungry!), then the combini to finish the night at Pete's.

Tuesday 19/08:
A bit of a rough start for the boys, so I go do some shopping at the department stores at Ikebukuro by myself. Didn't buy anything, but enjoyed browsing the food floors. A lot like the Grande Epicerie/Galleries Lafayette with a Japanese spin.

The three of us met up again at Ueno park and visited the temple and shrine there before going to the Tokyo National Museum, a perfect choice for the day because it was so ridiculously hot outside. The museum had an excellent collection of artifacts chronicling Japanese history. Could have easily spent a whole day there, but we ran out of time (and energy).

We wanted to go boating on the pond in the park with Pete when he was done work, but it started to rain, and we got hungry, so we had a pre-dinner meal of Korean food before meeting up with some friends of Steve's for dinner and drinks at an Okinawan izakaya.

Wednesday 20/08:
Our last day!!! :(

We actually got up at a reasonable hour for the first time the entire trip and went to the Edo Museum which is by the sumo stadium. We enjoyed the well presented history of Edo (old Tokyo) with many scale models of old neighbourhoods and living quarters. Again very interesting.

Have lunch at a delicious ramen shop nearby.

Take the subway to Roppongi to see the Mori Tower. It's a huge tower with a shopping center inside. Less interesting than we expected, so we decide to walk from there to Omotesando, where we're meeting Pete and Emi later on.

Omotesando is like the Tokyo version of the Champs Elysee, with all the big designer brands and some really interesting architechture. I liked the Prada building, and the Tod's building and Dior were also really cool.

Had a taste of Canada with maple flavoured soft serve, then hit happy hour for a quick drink before meeting Pete and Emi.

Emi had arranged for us to go to a sake tasting organized by the Danish embassy at a famous tonkatsu restaurant, Maisen. The sake presentation was by Miyasaka breweries, and was lots of fun, and the food was also delicious. We had a guided tasting of five different sakes, then they left all the bottles on the table for us to enjoy with the meal.

A perfect way to end the trip. Not that we wanted it to end...

Then we were up bright and early yesterday morning to get the train out to Narita. Steve came along for the ride before continuing on to catch his flight out of Haneda. We were pretty disappointed when we checked in and were told that we wouldn't be able to sit together. After saying goodbye to Steve we cruised half-heartedly through duty free and were waiting to board when we got paged by the airline. Lucky us, we got upgraded to Premium Economy, which meant not only did we get to sit together, but a bigger seat, way more leg room with a leg rest, better food, and best of all champagne! It was a pretty good flight home.

And now we're back in Paris. Not much has changed. The weather is still grey, and it's absolutely pouring rain right now. It's nice to not be sweating all the time, and we slept with covers on the bed for the first time in two weeks.

Really not looking forward to going back to work.