I got up early this morning. I’ve been getting up early every morning. I’m not a morning person so it is weird to be awake before 6:00 each day. Today it was extra nice. It would give me time to explore Ueda before I left after lunch. Plus, I had no need to hang out in my smoking room.
I walked to the Ueda castle. It was originally built in 1583. Now it is part of a park and museum. It was so peaceful walking around the park. There were other people, but it seemed private compared to Tokyo. I took pictures and wandered. I heard drums off in the distance so I walked towards those. I imagined they were the big ceremonial drums. They stopped long before I could find them.
I also walked to the Historic Street. It looked like Japan from the 1500’s. I enjoyed the walk through the alley neighborhood to get to the historic street as much as I enjoyed the historic street. I love getting a glimpse of where people live. I always try to imagine what life might be like I lived there, rode my bike to that shop and ate at that restaurant. A bakery was open on the historic street, but none of the shops. It was still fun to walk down the street trying to imagine what life was like back then.
For lunch I met up with my spiritual teacher and one of my past classmates. She was not only one of his past students, but is now his translator and workshop organizer when he teaches in Japan. The main reason I am here is to attend one of these classes. I have met this class many times both in Japan, in Colorado and on zooms. So I was excited and honored to see them again and spend a week paying witness to their growth and their journey in person.
We left Ueda and headed up to the retreat center where the class will be. The class consists of 2 men and 10 women. A few minutes after I was shown to my room the guys came to say hi and take me to see where the girls were staying. Most everyone was there. I was welcomed with hugs and huge smiles. Those that spoke minimal English told me they were glad I came. The others told me in Japanese. Even through the language barrier, I knew they were grateful I came all this way to be with them. My heart was full and my happy tears were many.
Today was a travel day. In Japan you can have your luggage shipped from one hotel to the next. I asked my hotel about this. They looked up the address of where I was going and said they could not do same day shipping. It would get there the next day. My smaller bag was not big enough for a change of clothes, all my chargers, my toiletries, etc. I decided to travel with my suitcase.
In the morning I walked around the area of my hotel so I could explore without my suitcase as long as possible. I found a shrine near the hotel and a park which were both peaceful and beautiful.
An area near the hotel was a well guarded secret. Every entrance had guards in front of it. After walking by dozens of entrances all blocked off and guarded, I started to guess it was an area of government buildings. Eventually, I learned it was the National Diet Building. It is the center of political activity in Japan. It is where their House of Representatives and House of Councilors meet.
I also noticed many small buses and vans just parked on the streets nearby. They were all the same colors, white with a bright aqua blue. They all looked like they came out of the 1950’s. The windows in the back were covered with a heavy steel aqua colored mesh. Was this to keep prisoners in or to keep politicians safe from attacks from the outside? Upon doing some on-line searching, I found out they are police busses. They can be used for transporting prisoners or transporting police to an event where many police are needed. They can be used as mobile command centers as well.
So I still don’t know why there were so many in this area, but I was pretty sure something important was going on.
I had to check out at 10:00 and my shinkensen train (fast train) wasn’t until a little after 1:00. In theory, it would take a half hour to get to the station the shinkensen left from. What should I do for 2.5 hours? There was a big park next to the station. What could be more fun than taking your suitcase for a romantic stroll through the park on a lovely Saturday morning?
It took a few tries to figure out the best way to navigate the escalators with the suitcase. Too far in one direction and it might fall off the step when the step appears. Too far in the other direction and you’ll get squished by it when the step appears. Then when the ride comes to an end, you better be ready to give a good shove or it gets stuck on the transition and the person behind you runs into you. There were plenty of escalators to practice my technique on the way to the park.
There was also one giant staircase leaving the station just to make sure I got a good arm workout for the day. Then all the different sidewalk paver textures, street crosswalks and the park trail rounded out the workout as I use various muscles to push, pull, drag, lift, and skitter my suitcase along. I hoped the wheels would survive Japan. I need an adult sized version of the suitcase some kids have that they can sit or ride on. Why aren’t there more ride-on suitcases? So, of course, I got on line and looked up ride-on suitcases. There are quite a few options. One was a scooter suitcase. That’s what I need.
I felt silly taking my suitcase through the park, but I wasn’t the only one. I saw quite a few other people enjoying the day with their luggage. I sat on a bench by the lake and watched people in pink and white paddle boats paddle slowly by. You could hear children’s laughter echoing from all parts of the park. The sound of footsteps all around as some people wandered and some were out for their mid-morning jog. And the sounds of conversations filled the air as well.
I couldn’t fathom taking my suitcase out to lunch so I reached to the bottom of my purse and pulled out the emergencheese – individually packaged cheese I had shoved in there in case of a food emergency. What if the plane only had fish? I’d have emergencheese. What if my hotel restaurant wasn’t open and I couldn’t find another place to eat? Emergencheese. What if you were in a park and didn’t want to look for a restaurant and then shove your suitcase into that restaurant? You guessed it – Emergencheese. It did the trick but was completely unexciting.
I gave myself plenty of time to find my train. My train name was the Asama, but of course none of the signs said Asama. I followed the signs to the shinkansen assuming all the fast trains were in the same location. There was a big sign above the gate to the shinkansen that had a lot of the train names, departure times and platform numbers on it. There were no trains past 12:30 shown yet, but I felt I was headed in the right direction. I went in the ticket office and asked what platform mine would leave from – platform 19.
I got to the gate, put my ticket in. The machine sucked my ticket in and spit it out farther ahead, but the gate didn’t open. A train employee nearby instructed me about what I did wrong in Japanese. I scooted backwards until I was out the gate and got in line to see her since I had no idea what she said or what to do. Each shinkensen ticket comes with a local ticket as well. I needed to put both in at the same time. It would have taken me a half hour of trying other wrong ways before I would have thought of trying that…..
I put both in. They both got sucked up and spit out. The gate opened and I was free to go find Platform 19.
I got to Ueda and found my hotel with no problem. Again, the hotel had an automated machine with a guy standing behind it helping me push all the correct buttons. He took my key out of the machine and proudly exclaimed “one smoking room”. No, I didn’t book a smoking room. I asked if there were any non-smoking rooms I could switch too. He told me they were fully booked. I looked at my email booking confirmation. Oh, right there – smoking. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t argue with it now. I checked online for quite a while. I used Agoda, Google Maps, Hotels.com and Airbnb. Not only was this hotel fully booked, every hotel in the entire town was fully booked.
I opened the window in my room and sprayed the room/fabric spray they gave me. The spray did nothing. I did some laundry, shoved my clean clothes in my suitcase and vowed to not open it again until I had to. I doubt the room would have ruined my clothes since no one was actively smoking in my room, but better safe than sorry.
I found a delightful place for dinner that had a caprese salad. It was really good. The woman that made the salad was excited to tell me she made the mozzarella that day and showed me pictures of the process. I find most people I have come into contact with want to welcome me and have an interaction with me even if small. People are quite friendly here, especially outside the big city.
I decided to keep my window open all night. There didn’t seem to be too many bugs to make this a problem. When the train went by, it sounded like a jet plane was landing in my room. Either I was too tired to care or the trains stopped running at night, because they didn’t keep me awake.
Rain was predicted for today. In fact it was raining when I went down from my room to breakfast. I debated if I should bring the umbrella and rain jacket or just the rain jacket. The umbrella is just another thing to carry and the rain was light. I chose just the rain jacket. I should have taken both.
Today, I had scheduled a tour through the streets of Tokyo on go-karts. I was quite excited. I hoped the rain didn’t ruin the activity. I headed over to the kart shop. There were four others signed up to go with me.
It was no longer raining, but the cart guy said it was expected to start back up in the middle of the 2 hour tour. I could get a refund or if I decided to go, they would lend me a rain coat, rain pants, gloves, goggles AND a rain poncho. Under all that, how would I even know if it was raining. I should have taken the refund.
The group of 4 came in after me and didn’t know you needed to have an international driver’s license to go on the tour. So they couldn’t go. It was just me. I expected it would be me and a guide in karts zipping around. That didn’t sound as fun as a big group, but it sounded fun enough so I suited up in all the anti rain stuff and watched the safety video.
There would be a lead car and a follow car so I just had to follow the lead car and not run any red lights. After a hands-on tutorial of the kart, I was ready to go. Wait, there was no guide in a kart going with me. This suddenly went down on the fun scale to fun adjacent.
It started off ok. I was a little slow at first. I didn’t want to gun it and run into the lead car. I would start up slow and then speed up just in time to have to break at a stop light. Apparently I was driving around with my hazards on because the guy in the follow car ran up to me at a stop light and asked if I was ok and then turned them off. Ooops.
The turn signal was trying to get the better of me. I couldn’t see the toggle switch under the wheel. I missed it quite a few times and I bet I was driving around with it on when I wasn’t turning from time to time. I don’t even know why I cared. The follow car had a clear view of the lead car over my head and knew when we were turning.
It rained a little harder. The break and gas pedals were slippery. My goggles were streaked with rain. The rain jacket hood slowly slipped farther back exposing more of my face and allowing water to drip into the jacket. I couldn’t tell if I was mildly wet or completely soaked.
I basically was flying slowly (felt fast to me, but probably was annoyingly slow to everyone else) in a bubble between the lead and follow cars so I felt safe-ish. But I was sitting on the ground by myself completely exposed to the elements in a vehicle that is squirrely. Water was everywhere. It rained harder and harder and became more difficult to see or push the pedals. I had dropped solidly into the category of pure un-fun – no fun anywhere to be found.
I raised my hand at the next light which was the signal to abort. Someone from the lead car ran out and asked if I wanted to abort. Yes, very much so. The lead car found a safe place to pull over and I was shuttled into the lead car. I have no idea what became of the kart. We drove around a bit. Then we stopped for a photo at Tokyo Station, then went back.
I have a coupon for another time. I still think it would be a lot of fun not by myself.
I asked if there was anything they recommended I could do that was fun and not in the rain. My plan was to go to a park after, but that was solidly in the non-fun category now. My feet and pants were dry, but my top was not. Both TeamLabs and the Harry Potter Tour were recommended. Everyone kept asking if I was cold – not in the slightest. I had my rain jacket, but they gave me a poncho to add to the mix.
I looked up TeamLabs – no tickets available. I looked up the HP tour. There were tickets, but it seemed far away. To HP or not to HP? I didn’t have the energy to come up with another idea. I ordered a cab to the HP tour which cost the same as the HP tickets.
They gave me a plastic bag to put my wet poncho in. That was nice. The tour covered a lot about how the movies were made. It also had a bunch of sets that looked like the movie sets so you could walk through them. Most of the instructions by staff were in Japanese, but it wasn’t hard to get the gist. There were places where you could act out scenes or get your picture taken. I tried them all, but, wow, I’m horrible. Not that anyone around me was great, but each time I watched the video I just made, I cringed. It wasn’t even funny bad acting.
The best part of the whole thing was that about 90% of the people, including the adults went into the gift shop ahead of the tour and bought a cape, scarf and wand. The place was completely covered in giddy, excited people running around pretending they were wizards. They were posing for pictures, waving their wands to do spells, and having the best time ever.
Halfway through the tour was a cafe and a bar where you could get butter beer. I was quite ready to try butter beer. I love everything butter. I got the butter beer and popcorn combo. The butter beer smelled like butterscotch, but didn’t quite taste like it. It just tasted sweet. It was fun to sit at the pub and have a butter beer. It also came in a souvenir cup. My poor husband is going to get a bunch of souvenir cups when I get home and not a single cat hat.
After taking way too many pictures it was time to figure out how to get back to the hotel. The trains would take over an hour and would involve walking in the pouring rain. I was in a zone Go Taxis were not allowed because there was a formal taxi stand nearby. Go is like Uber. There was no taxi stand anywhere in sight. There was nothing. I thought if I headed out to the street, I might get out of the no Go zone. I got out of the zone, but no Go’s were available in the area. I was completely soaked now anyway despite the gift poncho. I ask maps to find the train station. I hoped my phone continued to work even though it was also soaked. Wandering through train stations and riding trains for an hour and my clothes were dry again. Yay for quick drying clothes.
This was going to be a good night to eat at the hotel. No, it was closed for a private party just like every other night. Back out into the rain. I went back to the place I went the first night for more meat on a stick.
There are a lot of small restaurants in Tokyo. These are often found in alleys. They usually hold 10 to 20 customers. You sit at a counter facing the kitchen which I like as well. It’s fun to watch the cooks.
When you enter the restaurant, the cook, waitress and any other staff call out to you. It’s like they are giving a cheer that you have arrived at their establishment. I have no idea what they are saying, but I imagine it is “Yay! You are here! Welcome!”. When you order, the waitress calls out and the cook answers. In my head they said “She would like a steak”. “Great choice, foreign lady”. When you leave everyone cheerfully yells out in unison. Again, I made up the words “Have a great day!”.
Rraine Drops 