Our pledge to not over-exert ourselves this holiday failed today. We return home exhausted, but happy. I’m quite sure I’ve pulled a muscle in my left leg but I’ll wait for our quiet time in Hakone before I let it take serious rest.
Ueno was our morning stop, where we checked out the fairly average markets (we were definitely spoilt by Shimokitazawa yesterday) then wandered around the Edo period shrine in Ueno Park. A short walk East took us to the Tokyo National Museum where we got our fill of Japanese art & culture, mostly from the Edo period, before deciding we weren’t in the mood for anymore museums, and we jumped on a train to Shinjuku.
Shinjuku-Gyoen (garden) was a beautiful respite as we strolled through the lovely park which is surrounded by bustle and skyscrapers. We followed this by a short walk through Shinjuku and a highly successful shop at “creative” department store Tokyu Hands.
Our accommodation comes with a portable wifi device, which has made navigating this complex city infinitely more manageable. I highly recommend future visitors rent one. Despite this, we still struggled to locate our dinner venue, with Google Maps getting very confused as we moved from dense street to street. The final destination was worth it, a Turkish restaurant with lots of good vegetarian options.
Our last stop was the super nerdy 8-Bit Cafe, a small hidden venue up some dodgy stairs that we would have never known existed if not for some earlier Googling. The cafe is literally stuffed full of 80s and 90s nerd nostalgia – Famicons, Dreamcasts, Manga, Neo Geos, VHS tapes – and had a bunch of SNES and Gameboy Advance/Colour games you could play all night. Obviously, I was in some sort of heaven, and Marthese was the greatest for indulging my nerdy wonderment for as long as she did.
Marthese stuck with her Santory Whiskey and Ginger Beer that has served her well this trip, while I drank lots of Sake and a weird bourbon concoction. The poor quality of this blog post is due to this. Gnight, love you all.
Elias Rambles 