SUMMARY Took a mid-morning train back to Tokyo, hiked to our very nice hotel with early check-in, complimentary cocktail coupons and a room upgrade. So-so sushi lunch. Tried to visit the East Garden at the Imperial Palace but discovered it was closed on Mondays. Back to near our hotel and the very pretty Hamarikyu Gardens. Complimentary cocktails and blogging at hotel before our Indian food dinner (at Bollywood Lounge). Lots and lots of stairs and walking! - Karen
DETAIL Today in Nagano the Metropolitan Hotel has a very full, very good buffet breakfast. Asian soups, dishes, smoked fish, and even a big bottle of sake. They also have all the usual western stuff: bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, fruit. We enjoy it.
Happy to know we’ll be on the earlier train back to Tokyo. Check in at our hotel won’t be until 3 but we can leave our bags and the location is super. We’re close to the dock (for the cruise ship) but that means we’re also close to the Ginzu neighborhood, the Hamarikyu Gardens, The Nippon Television tower, and some fish market.
We’re (again) sitting on the south side of the train. Mt Fuji is 65 miles to the south, but with the haze we probably won’t see it today. The ride is uneventful as we’ve seen this all before, yesterday.
We do have trouble finding the subway line to our hotel. When we find it we’re still not sure it’s the right one. We have a pass for the Tokyo subway lines and this is something different. We ask someone who seems like a local if we’re on the right train. He speaks no English. He confirms “yes”. Later, as he gets off one stop before ours, he kindly reminds us to get off at the next stop! Once off, how do we get out? We don’t have tickets. We ask an official and our told our Nagano bullet train ticket will work and they do.
We walk the rest of the way to our hotel. The cars and trucks are driving on street level. And for (most of) the pedestrians There are nice raised walkways and underground tunnels. Very civilized and it makes it more calm for everyone.
At our hotel we come in on 2nd floor, from a raised walkway. Should we go down to 1st floor? A sign says reception is on the 25th floor, which seem odd, but it is. It has an awesome view. It’s only 1pm and check in isn’t until 3. But we have gold status (with the ever so pedestrian "hotels.com", so we can check in now! And we’re upgraded to a nicer room. And we get two free drinks at their nice bar. All this for a $150 a night hotel room!
We drop our luggage in the room and find a good looking sushi place in the ginza neighborhood for lunch. There’s a dozen people in line for a table so we go somewhere else, down the street. It is a real price performer (~US$10 per person for a full meal), but the sushi and grilled fish waiver between awesome and "not the best". Oh well.
We get a couple of pastries at a French bakery and walk to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. The good news is that entrance is free. The bad news is that they’re closed today. More walking and sunshine, very blue sky. We plan to return tomorrow before our cruise.
We hop the metro back towards our hotel, to another imperial garden nearby, on the water. This one is open, whew. It’s very large and green. It was set up for the Emperor many years ago and it’s been maintained since. It’s pretty nice. We see one old building where the Emperor used to be “entertained” after which he rested. We think about it and believe he’d need some rest after that.
We get the free drinks at our hotel. The bar is also on the 25th floor and bar tenders know their way around a gin and tonic. We pay for two more which we take up to our room on the 32nd floor. We do some blog writing and then walk to Indian restaurant. It’s very good, thought we should have ordered it hotter. Like everything here it’s a price performer. We need to look up how strong the US$ is to the ¥.
We hike the short way back to our hotel in the cool night air. We are proud that we’re able to find our room on the first try.
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