Boys' day out

We had our normal, happy Tom back today - yahoooo!  Such a shame he timed his off day for the day with Hiromi!

So we have rain again - in fact as i am writing this it is absolutely hammering it down.  One good thing is that it has cooled down.  Today was unbearably sticky and humid - basically spent the whole day sweating - even in air conditioned shops and trains it was that bad!

So today Matt and I split up.  I wanted to do some last minute shopping without the boys (much easier) and as Matt is about to spend 10 days away from Tom he decided to take him out.  More on that later.

Once the boys had gone, I had a shower and then headed over to Daiba to do some last minute shopping.  I got the Yurikamome to Daiba and got off at the central point, headed to the first shopping centre, Aqua to find it was closed.  Didn't open until 11am.  It was 9.50am!  I then headed to Decks - which has lots of child friendly places, it didn't open until 11am!  Poo!!!! Last shot was Diver City, hurray, it was open.  Now I remember there being a Daisō here, so had a look at the shop plan, but there was nothing on it saying Daisō.  That doesn't mean it wasn't there, about 50% of the shops were named just in Japanese (which is funny because nearly every shop front has their name only using Roman letters on it!  (Another one of those querky things you get here like every menu in the country saying 'menu' but then every other word on it being in Japanese.  I get excited and caught out by it all the time!).

Anyway, that meant that I had to walk up and down every floor to find it.  I missed out the top floor as that was all restaurants, and walked all the other floors.  It wasn't to be found, maybe my memory was wrong.  I was just about to leave the place in a huff when I noticed a poster in the doorway with lots of English on it.  Guess what Daisō was there - on the top floor - of course!!!  So, I went back up and found it immediately, exactly where I remembered it (just the wrong floor).  In I went and another number of 100 Yen purchases were made - this time for parties: fans, origami sets etc.  All things that hopefully the children back home will enjoy, as well as some other things that I couldn't possibly leave Japan without.

Cheers

By now I was bored with the whole thing (ie shopping) it had taken way too long to find an open shop, and then a shop I wanted, so my browsing was over.  I went to get another set of photos printed for the scrapbook and then headed back home.

Once home my job was to start the packing.  As you know, this holiday has been mainly about shopping and trains, so there was a lot of shopping to pack.  Luckily we came over with half empty suitcases and an emergency bag to check in.  It all fitted in fine.  In fact I think we have space to spare, and Matt will quite easily be able to pack his things without cramming.

edamame boy

At 2pm I headed off to Hamamatsu-chō to meet up with the boys.  We went for tea and a bun and then headed home for a session of scrapbooking and work.  As the heavens had opened we decided to head somewhere close for dinner and went to the food court at the foot of the Toshiba building which is opposite us.  There we found an izakaya and had another wonderful dinner:

+ okonomiyaki (at last)
+ jumbo ebi katsu
+ edamane
+ gyōza
+ deep fried fishy things (satsuma-age)
+ potato salad
+ 5 minced chicken skewer things (tsukune) with 5 different toppings

All very very yummy and washed down with some huge ice cold beers - very oishii, especially after a day like today.  Tom ate as if he had a hole in his tummy - everything evaporated in front of him!

Matt here.

Super Azusa (not my photo)

Yes, as Tom and I were going to be spending the day together, I asked him what he'd like to do. Guess what? Ride on an express train. So, after a quick look at the JR website to see which of the few lines we hadn't yet been down, I decided we'd head to Kōfu on the Super Azusa Limited Express. This involved getting the Yamanote Line (Tokyo's equivalent of the Circle Line) round to Shinjuku, the world's busiest railway station (between 3 and 4 million passengers per DAY). To be honest, I was slightly dreading herding the lad through the crowds but (a) the morning rush hour had more or less dissipated and (b) we only had to move a couple of platforms to get to our express.

Train sleep

It left bang on 10.00am and spent a good half hour speeding through the vast spread of Tokyo suburbs, and then BANG! At Hachiōji, the sprawl ends and the mountains begin. It's incredibly abrupt. For the remaining hour or so to Kōfu, the scenery is delightful - steep tree-covered mountains and raging rivers. The railway line is really curvy, and you could feel the train tilting round the bends. The horribly wet weather meant that the view wasn't as good as it might have been, which was especially disappointing given Kōfu's proximity to Mount Fuji, which we still haven't seen on this trip.

We only had about 40 minutes there before our train back (the day out was really just the train ride), so I rushed Tom up to the top floor of the station building and forced half a large portion of pork cutlet curry down him, which he seemed to greatly enjoy. The waitress took a real shine to him (this has happened umpteen times on this trip) and gave him a big glass of orange juice for free. Once I'd paid the bill, we had 8 minutes to get our train back to Shinjuku, so it was straight back to the platform.

No, I didn't wet myself

Once on board, Tom announced he needed a sleep. I wasn't going to complain after yesterday's antics, so I nabbed the window seat, he took the (thankfully) vacant seat next to me, put his head on my lap and was soon out like a light. He slept all the way to Shinjuku nearly 90 minutes). I didn't feel it at the time, but when he lifted his head off my lap, there was a huge wet patch on my trousers that looked for all the world as if I'd wet myself in a big way - just what you don't need when walking through the world's busiest station. Thank God I was wearing a fairly long T-shirt. Still, when the humidity is about5 500%, as it was today, it can't be helped. He woke up in a good mood, and we got the train back round to Hamamatsu-chō to meet Nik, who was greeted by a huge running hug from the boy.