Asia 2016 - Day 11 - Clockwork Tokyo

Finally I am back with more news. As mentioned in the previous post we ran into some technical difficulties due to let's call it lack of of energy, both in the literal way and the metaphoric. In Seoul we were a mere 10 min taxi ride away from our hotel where we could also order cheap dinner from the comfort of our room. Tokyo on the other hand is big. It is not a city but rather a federation of cities, the same as the United States of America are a coalition of individual states. In every ward, that's what the different districts in the city are called, you find a different atmosphere and people.

Every part of the city is connected via a network of railways, and metros. Having seen a city like Paris you would expect it to be singular metro network maybe even operated by the same company as the train company. Wrong again, it is a network of different operators that may or may not connect their stations together and operate often on a local level. The good thing is that there are Payment cards that offer a tap-in / tap-out system on every metro line in Tokyo as well as the JR-lines. There are two and as long as you stay within the confines of the city it makes no difference which you take; Suica or Pasmo. We had not trouble so far with Suica except for one JR station where we needed to go to a counter to pay. I recommend taking the Suica card however purely because it worked very well so far but most importantly it has a penguin on it ;). In all seriousness however if you leave Tokyo check if the line supports your card and or offers discounts. Like the T-money card in Seoul a number of vending machines and shops take payments from the card. Every ride costs between 120Y and 200+ (the exception) so far. If you travel around a lot it may be cheaper to take a day ticket but the comfort of simply tapping and recharging the card is hard to beat.

The last trains operate runs around midnight thus they say that the life of Tokians runs like clockwork based on the schedule of the train. Seeing the masses of people on the public transportation (and we have not taken any bus) confirms this.

Now enough of trains and back to our daily escapades. On the 3rd we got up in the Tobu Airport hotel and allowed ourselves to eat through the breakfast buffet. Then fully nourished we packed up and left for the Airport again using the provided shuttle bus and decided to get ourselves again a wifi egg (hotspot). We now have 7Gb of 4G (it say 7G on the box?) at our disposal and learning from the mediocre tripadvisor experience we now switched to google maps whenever we need directions. But our shopping had not ended there, we also got the Suica cards and mentioned above and then we got a direct express ticket to Shinbashi station close to our hotel. There are a number of express trains leaving the airport but not every express is going in the same direction or is even the same express not matter the name similarities.

We found our way and then a short metro-ride we got to the Hotel. Unfortunately check-in is only after 15.00 and we left our luggage and went to the nearby Toranomon Hills tower for a quick Udon lunch.

The carbonara udon noodles were quite delicious. After lunch we headed to nearby Ginza a district known for their expensive shops and people who like to spent their (hard-)earned cash.

We visited the Sony building with their latest products, Mitsukoshi shopping mall and Bic camera a department store having everything from a hair dryer to cosmetica. If we had a mall like that in Luxembourg, we would need amazon much less. There we also bought a electrical adapter but that only fit the phone chargers not the bigger laptop one.

We ended the day but having a quick fast food dinner and going for our first cherry blossom experience in the slope (zaka) around Tokyo midtown.

However we left on the wrong side and walked all the way from Midtown to the slope and were too exhausted to look at the midtown complex more closely.