Our flight landed around 20 mins late into Narita and we were glad to be on our way and off the plane. Despite being behind schedule after waiting a while to get our passports stamped with tourist visas we still had plenty of time to pick up our Pasmo cards before getting our train into town. A Pasmo card is one of the many IC cards available in Japan that you can use on local trains, buses and even purchases in shops and from vending machines across the country. With the complex nature of some of the train and bus fares having an IC card of some sort makes life significantly easier.
We then had a good long wait for our Sky Access train into town with a quick change onto the Asakusa line.
We stumbled off the train at Asakusa, trying and failing to work out the right exit. We finally emerged from the depths into a clear Tokyo night with the golden illumination of the Asahi building and the neon spectacle of the Tokyo Skytree to guide us to our hotel, or so we hoped.
As our pocket Wi-Fi was waiting for us at the hotel all we had were some google maps screen captures to guide us. We took a guess, with Ms. Spymon leading the way and although we'd not chosen the optimal route we arrived at the Karimanon gate of Senso-Ji and shortly afterwards spotted our home for the next two nights, The Gate Hotel.
(Taken on a different occasion)
We were warmly welcomed at check in. The hotel lobby had spectacular views of the Skytree and straight away we really felt we had arrived in Japan. The hotel acknowledged it was our honeymoon and in addition to giving us a room on a high floor with Skytree views they gave us a voucher to spend in the hotel which was used the next day for drinks and snacks on the 14th floor bar. An envelope containing our pocket Wi-Fi was also handed over. We headed up to the room to drop our things and also found a beautiful card congratulating us on our marriage along with some of the hotel's own brand bath products.
We then headed out to Senso-ji to take in the atmosphere. The complex is beautiful at night with all the buildings and gates illuminated. It also proves a popular spot for selfie taking. Whilst the area is peaceful and quiet, a lot of atmosphere from earlier in the day when all the shops are open was missing. We walked around taking pictures for a bit before heading back to the hotel to crash. It had been a long few days.
We woke up fairly bright and early as we had planned and headed for Kappbashi coffee. Our route took us past an interesting assortment of shops selling every odd and end required for the restaurant trade from rusty grills & ceramics to signs and high quality plastic food.
We enjoyed our coffee and breakfast set. I am a big fan of the Japanese style extra thick toast/sandwich bread. The coffee was also excellent as was the simple décor of the coffee bar. Fuelled up we were ready for some studio Ghibli magic. But first we had some early teething problems with our new friend Mr. Wi-Fi Buddy who decided he did not want to give us internet access. Thankfully a quick reboot later we were friends again and he helped guide us towards the metro station.
Unfortunately we had made the mistake of turning off our Wi-Fi Buddy when on the train with the hope of saving battery which was actually unnecessary. After taking the right exit from the station but turning in the wrong direction we fired up our friend and unfortunately our phones picked up about a zillion hotspots but not our buddy…
After a brief discussion we did an entire loop of Kichijoji Station ending up back exactly where we started. In the end we got our bearings and found the route through Inokashira park which was a rather lovely spot that came the added bonus of being clearly signposted. We were now in the mood for our Ghibli adventure.
About 20 mins later we knew we'd come to the right place as we found a beautiful house filled with flowers and colours plus a huge totoro that everyone wanted a selfie with. We got in line and awaited our turn where our paper print out would be exchanged for a magical piece of film that would be our ticket.
The details throughout the museum were special. There was an exhibition on animation techniques which we liked, a recreation of the main man Miyazaki's work area and all of his influences from books to ads, comics, art… you could really see where the Ghibli style came from. For better for worse photography is forbidden in the museum with the exception of the rooftop garden and café areas, hence the lack of pics.
Speaking of which, there was also a quite wonderful rooftop garden with the giant robot from
Laputa: Castle in the Sky you could pose with (and we did) plus being in Japan everyone queued up and took it in turn to take each others photos with it.
And finally my favourite part was an exhibition on food in the Ghibli films and how they brought the scenes to life with small details from facial expressions of the characters eating to small movements in a bottle of lemonade to the difficulty of animating chopsticks compared to a knife and fork. Before leaving there was time to watch a special short film only shown at the museum about a day in the life of a small caterpillar named Boro.
We had originally planned to eat at the on site restaurant but the queues for the sit in option were huge so we gave up and enjoyed a stroll back through the park taking a very scenic yet enjoyable walk as the rain came down.
Feeling hungry we decided on what looked like a curry rice restaurant chain and enjoyed a very decent katsu curry for a very low price.
Fuelled and ready to go we had initially planned a walk around the more historic parts of Asakusa, however the rain had gotten significantly worse so we changed plans and headed back to Senso-ji to enjoy it by day and see inside the temple.
We also drew fortunes and quickly wished we hadn't. Mine was quickly tied to the line and I thanked my lucky stars I'd not drawn it a week earlier…
Shake out one of the sticks.
Match the symbol on the stick to the drawers.
Retrieve your fortune.
And hopefully don't draw this one!
But if you do tie it here.
We returned to the hotel for a brief rest and decided to cash in our complements of the manager card at the 14th floor bar. With some regret I might add. Thanks to the awful weather we had 100% lost the view that night. After some prompting all round it turned out our voucher was good for two glasses of wine and either a dessert or some bar snacks. We took two glasses of red and some bar snacks of which the beef jerky was particularly delicious.
We then headed out into the rain dashing quickly to the covered walkways hoping to find somewhere to eat. Our original plan was to walk to the Skytree and check out a ramen place from our guidebook but with torrential rain outside this was scrapped. We did three tours of the area and eventually decided on an okonomiyaki place for dinner. It looked fairly busy and fun, filled with cooking smoke, extractor fans and good times. It turned out the only thing having a good time was a bug dancing inside Ms. Spymon's stomach that made her ill for the next few days.
Here's one they made for us!
We finished off our food for the night by picking up some taiyaki from a popular looking stall. After years of watching anime characters bite happily into these steaming hot bean filled pastries I was expecting some delicious comfort food. What we ended up with was one of the biggest culinary disappointments of the trip...
We called it a night but Ms. Spymon and her new friend had other ideas and with a full day of non-stop travel coming up the timing could not have been worse.
Me on the other hand... I was just fine or so I thought.