My Travel Adventures

We set our alarms to half past four in the hopes of seeing Mount Fuji illuminated by the first rays of sunrise. It was already quite bright, but when we walked outside, we found the clouds had closed in over Lake Yamanakako while we were asleep, and although we could see some of the nearby hills on the lake’s eastern side, Mount Fuji was completely hidden. We stayed outside for around an hour hoping the sky would clear up; being the last person to leave the house, I did not realise the others had all just walked to the beach in front of it, so I hightailed it all the way to the eastern end of the lake and met the gang somewhere in the middle after we figured out what had happened (they assumed I had gone back to bed).

We split up in the morning because each of us had a different idea of what to do with our last few hours in Tokyo. Ciaran wanted to have a nice breakfast at a bakery, while Brent and Joel needed to make a run to pick up Joel’s international driver’s licence from their next hotel in Tokyo (they had forgotten to get one while in the US, so they mailed themselves a copy). In the meantime, I realised I had not yet taken any nice pictures of the Tokyo Skytree, so I made a little trip to the Kameido Tenjin Shrine, where one can see the tower rise majestically above the temple’s old roof and the wisteria frames crisscrossing the gardens in front of it.

Our small group – consisting of Brent, Joel, Ciaran, and me – agreed last night that we would wake up at five thirty in the morning to catch the first express from the train station near the Tokyo Skytree to Nikko. We bought our breakfast at a 7-Eleven, which in my case consisted of one egg onigiri, a few little sweet breads with chocolate nibs, and a banana inexplicably wrapped in plastic. We arrived at the station in good time, but when we clicked through the options on the machine to purchase our tickets for the express, we discovered that the first train of the day had been cancelled and the next few had been booked out.

Brent, Joel, Ciaran, and I began our day at Senso-ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo. Dedicated to the Bodhisattva Kannon, the complex is known for its iconic five-story pagoda and is believed to be the most visited religious site in the world. Compared to the temples we saw on previous days, it has an uncharacteristically steep roof, and photography is allowed inside (though I would say there is not much of a point to it as the interior is not very ornate). Brent and Joel went to one of the wooden stands to buy omikuji: paper sheets with random fortunes written on them. According to tradition, if the fortune on the sheet is bad, the person who bought it can tie it to a nearby rack and it will be burned by a priest.

Today was light on sightseeing, as Ciaran and I had to make the two-and-a-half-hour Shinkansen trip from Kyoto to Tokyo (not including the transportation times to and from hotels) and because we met multiple friends. As soon as we left our bags at our apartment near Tokyo Skytree, we took the metro to the very other end of the city to meet Kevin and Jaya at the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is one of Tokyo’s most famous even though it was completed relatively recently – in 1921 – using materials from every prefecture ruled by Japan, including Karafuto (modern day Sakhalin), Korea, Kwantung, and Taiwan. Although it did not really blow us away, we were impressed by the very roundly pruned trees in its courtyard.

My plane arrived in Tokyo on Monday evening some forty minutes earlier than scheduled, which came as a big relief to me because I was afraid the airport shops would all start closing at eleven. I managed to exchange some money and buy a public transport pass. I also bought a SIM card, during which process I realised that I had lost my UK SIM card somewhere in Pakistan and spent much of the train ride from the airport trying to figure out how to block it. While unpacking my bags at the hotel, I also realised that I had lost my adapter. I must have left it in a plug at the airport in Kuala Lumpur.