Old Friend and Mega City

After a protracted train journey involving a wrong platform, a wrong line and a train that stopped short of our destination, we finally arrived at Notogawa station where Paul, Cat's old friend from sixth form, collected us. He took us to the beautiful wooden house that he and his wife Kaori had built a decade earlier in Shingaihama, just a five minute walk from Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. Flora had a brilliant weekend playing with Jonah, Ray and Tomoki and their extensive Lego and board games collection. Kaori made delicious fresh food for dinner and we got pretty carried away with a variety of concoctions and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing in their house and by the lake, where Cat had the chance to practice her sailing skills learnt four years before in a course in Qatar. It was so lovely to catch up with Paul, reminisce about the past, meet his family and learn more about Japanese culture. The tranquility of the countryside was perfect after so many weeks in cities.
After the weekend we took our final Shinkansen to Tokyo. After the long

journey we just went to the local park and chilled out. The next day was Flora’s 6th birthday and she awoke to learn that she would be going to Disneyland. She was incredibly excited! It turned out to be a good time to visit – mid week, school back etc. It wasn’t too busy and we didn’t queue for any rides for longer than half an hour. Flora was tall enough to go on every ride, including the fastest and scariest roller coaster – space mountain. She loved it so much we went on twice. The rides she didn’t like at all, were anything to do with witches, pirates and Darth Vader. For those she buried her head into our laps and put her fingers in her ears until they were over! One of her favourite experiences was meeting the Disney

characters (she danced with one of the seven dwarfs, and talked to Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, the Fairy Godmother and Sleeping Beauty) and watching the parade. She managed to stay energized for the entire day and we left when it closed at 10pm.
We spent the following five days exploring Tokyo, mostly by wandering around various neighbourhoods on foot. We went to visit the Mejji Shrine (of which we have a large framed print in London),

Shinjuku, and the crazy Shibuya crossing, where a thousand people can cross the road at once. It’s pretty mental. We found a cute little one man show Ramen bar followed by beers and whiskey highballs in a local bar. We rode a swan pedal boat on the lake (the bit that wasn’t overtaken by giant lily pads) in Ueno, and then wandered the cat loving streets of Yanaka - reminding us of Paul and Vic and our dear Maradona - where we happened upon our favourite restaurant of Tokyo. It was small and cute (as most are) and served up delicious onomiyaki, sobayaki and teppanyaki, all washed down with local Yebisu beer. The Akhabara neighbourhood of video games and electronics is like nowhere else – but whilst it was interesting to see, as we are not computer game fanatics, it didn’t hold interest

for too long. Roppongi was completely different and seemed much fancier. We found a cheap place to enjoy some really good food and beer where every dish was 289 yen. Travelling with Flora meant we didn’t have the opportunity to explore the wild nightlife and karaoke bars, but it seemed to us (and was reinforced by Paul) that many of the bars are hidden in tall buildings and therefore not so easy to find unless you know where you are going. We really enjoyed Tokyo. It is really vibrant, but despite being such a massive city, it also retains appealing quiet low rise neighborhoods. It has a lot to offer.