Some down time in Shibuya, but also a very humid sweaty time.
I won't go over this beat for beat, but it was one of those trips where I didn't realise how much I needed to get away until day 5 of being away.
I have a bad habit of over-engineering my trips, often coming back more tired than I left (and I was very tired), so this trip's plans were to try to stay as centrally as possible in Tokyo, and just hang out, go to cafes and whip out my kindle and read through whateve Brandon Sanderson 'cosmere' book I was up to (it was Rhythm of War but oh my word there are so many of these cosmere novels). And I did just that.
Slight aside by the best little cafe I enjoyed in Shibuya was bistro rojiura, OR Cafe ROSTRO. At the latter I met an amazing Canadian woman who had been living in Tokyo with her husband and kids for 9 years. She used to be a banking exec, living and working in Hong Kong and Singapore, and just had some amazing stories and perspectives. A lot of, after all of those rat race experiences, what had been the important things for her. Gave me a lot to think about.
Okay, so moving away from the purely tangential, this trip was a lot of checking off stuff from my lists, really good pizza places and, Kappabashi, which is a street market for kitchenware and foodstuffs, and I got some amazing miso and soy sauce and pickles and all that good stuff. I went and checked out Kamekura, which is a really old area of Tokyo, and it was just a really cool area with a lot of old buildings and temples and shrines and stuff. I also went and did a small day trip to Shimoyoshida to check out the views of Mount Fuji from the shrine a short walk from the station. It was a moody moody day, but still managed to get some nice photos.
Alright, enough talking, here are some photos.
Here are some of my favorite spots I discovered and tagged during my time in Tokyo:
