Saturday morning we decided to visit the Hiroshima castle, despite a warning from our main guidebook, before heading back to Tokyo. We got out of the hotel around 9:30, catching the tram west as we'd done the day before. We ended up talking with a US military family on their way there, which was interesting to me as they actively wanted to talk to us. (I've found that the vast majority of Westerners we see here tend to avoid making eye contact, let along conversation, so that was a change.) Getting off the streetcar one stop before the Peace Memorial, we walked north, under the street, and around a few corners before coming up near the moat of the castle. We entered the main gate, and walked into the gatehouse near the front, which housed a mini museum. Fortunately, the museum was free! Unfortunately, nearly all the signage was in Japanese, so we weren't really sure of the significance of what we saw. Still, there were some interesting scale models of the grounds, as well as a large drum, which did have English on the sign; drums were used to signify the time of day for the samurai in and around the castle. After finishing exploring the gatehouse, we walked up to the castle proper, but didn't have time to head in, so we saved our 350 yen and headed back out. We tried to stop by the shrine on the way out, but there was yet another wedding party and we didn't want to walk through them, so we weren't able to get in. We were, however, stopped by a man who recognized us from walking around Kyoto, and asked if we had been there looking at the cherry blossoms. That was interesting! I suppose wearing my LOZ jacket every day is a giveaway.
We went back to the hotel, gathered our things, and walked next door to the train station. I grabbed a small snack for the train, and then we were off! An hour or so later, we had a transfer at Shin-Osaka, where we decided we would find a real lunch since we had 30 minutes. Katie and I checked out a few different places, and I settled on a couple small sandwiches. She saw some steamed buns that she wanted, but when I went to order them, we ran into the language barrier pretty quickly. The clerk kept asking me a question that I couldn't understand, and eventually brought over a man whose English was pretty solid. (I really should have learned more Japanese before we came.) Eventually, we were told the buns were cold and we'd need a microwave in order to eat them, so they were not for train lunching. However, the man also gave us directions on how to find their other store, which had hot buns, just outside the ticket gate. Since we still had our JR passes, we decided to chance it, and found the place pretty quickly! I wanted to get some gyoza with the buns, but they were going to take 10 minutes, and we only had 11 until the train came, so we skipped the gyoza; still, I placed our order, and our buns were boxed and ready to go. We also picked up mini waffles to go, and made it to the platform with just a couple minutes to spare! Perfect timing, and Katie got her lunch.
A few hours (and several chapters into Divergent later), we arrived at Tokyo station. Katie and I figured out how to get back to Jon Brooks' place, and hopped on the metro. Jon was just getting ready to leave for the airport when we got there, and was a whirlwind of activity gathering his things. We took final instructions to shut down his flat when we left, and he rolled out to the airport while we looked up where we wanted to go for dinner. We then realized we would need to run some laundry before we left Jon's house, but had no idea how to run his combination washer/dryer; all the instructions were in Japanese, and we had no way to call him. We tried googling the make and model, but all the information that came up was in Japanese as well. Katie emailed him, hoping we'd get a response before he left the country; otherwise, we didn't think we'd hear from him from Australia before we had to leave the house. Thankfully, he responded later in the evening, so that mini crisis was eventually averted, although we had to start the laundry pretty late that night. However, around this time a new crisis decided to spring up: dinner.
[Back story: Katie had received a book on Tokyo from one of the firm partners before we left, similar to any other type of guidebook. However, this book was made in 2009 and, more importantly, had already burned us once. We'd tried to find a place it suggested while in Tokyo before, only to find out that place no longer exists. Still, we figured it couldn't be wrong twice...right?]
We wanted to find a place that had conveyor belt sushi which was also of a good quality, as the obvious concern for such cheap fare is questionable safety. The Tokyo book suggested a place, but the first few Google searches seemed to turn up a place that had moved, without giving the new location, and nearly all of the search results were in Japanese. Then we found their company website, which claimed there were multiple locations, but again: Japanese writing. We tried a few different search parameters inside Google Maps, and found that there seemed to be at least one more location of the same restaurant near to the original one. After confirming and reconfirming directions, we set out, our increasing hunger perhaps clouding our better judgement.
The neighborhood where we were headed, Asakusa, is geographically fairly close to Jon's house in Sendagi. However, there is no real easy way to get there by train without a fair walk to the JR line, which we didn't want to do in the dark. This made a trip which should have been 20 minutes into nearly an hour, with two train line transfers. By the time we got to the restaurant, we were famished. We found the restaurant, which really excited me. In fact, I was so excited when we walked up to it that I was willing to overlook the fact that there were no seats. When we got in, I also overlooked the fact that there was a seemingly drunk man trying to tell us how to eat the sushi: with our hands, not our chopsticks. Most importantly, however, I completely overlooked the fact that while it was the right restaurant, in the right spot, with the right fare, it did not have a conveyor belt. We had invested over an hour's worth of research, time, and travel to find a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, only to stand at a bar and order sushi a la carte. I blame myself, really; I'm the one who walked in and started ordering. (Sorry, Katie.) Still, we made the most of the situation; their fatty tuna and ebi were incredibly good.
After sampling some of their food (but leaving room for more), we left to find Sensoji, a temple where it is rumored that a golden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, is housed. The temple is closed to the public, though, so there's no way to confirm it. Still, it is the oldest temple in Tokyo (completed in 645) and the most visited (so much so that the grounds are accessible 24/7). After seeing the temple, we decided we needed to find a second place to eat to finish dinner. We decided to head to a tempura place, but realized when we were nearly there that it was about to close for the night. (This is, of course, assuming it was actually there, and what it claimed to be.) We decided to visit the supermarket to try and find some ready-to-eat food, but for some reason, there wasn't really anything we could just take home and eat without needing to heat it up. We didn't know how to operate Jon's toaster oven or gas burner, and figured it was best not to figure it out on the fly. We did, however, see a 7-11 on the way back to the train station, where we picked up sandwiches and other snack food to make a second mini-dinner. Finally, we headed back to the flat, got Jon's message, started the laundry, ate some sandwiches, watched Adventure Time, and hit the hay. All in all, a good day. Even if Tokyo books mislead and websites lie about restaurants serving conveyor belt sushi.
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