Japan Day 13: The Joy Of Vending Machine Coffee

Roger survived his flight with only mild trauma from spending 10 hours in a plane where everyone had shut the window shades so he couldn't see out. Mind you he could follow his progress on the little screen in front of him, was plied continually with good (for an aeroplane) food, and the air hostess gave him an extra glass of wine for being nice to her so he didn't have a lot to complain about.

We were out bright and not early in the morning to give him a taste of Tokyo by picking up his JR rail pass at Shinagawa Station which rates high on my personal list of most confusing railway stations ever. Mind you, his day was made barely 200m from our front door.

He found a coffee vending machine!

The minute he got his pass we booked our Shinkansen tickets for Wednesday's trip out of Tokyo, which was quite the exercise in confusion and entailed several false starts but we got there in the end. 

Just what was needed for simple foreigners.

Then we set off to explore a little bit of Tokyo, Roger relying somewhat innocently on my very inadequate tour guide skills. 

It was a warm sunny weekend day and everyone in Tokyo seemed to be out and about, filling up the train carriages. We squeezed in with them to Tokyo and then Shinjuku for Roger's obligatory taste of busy underground shopping centres and streets of bright lights. 

Obligatory photo in front of the Maranouchi building.

Its brighter and better by night.

We saw a bubble tea shop and thought it a great place to come back to for afternoon tea, but of course by the time afternoon tea time rolled along the bubble tea shop was nowhere to be found. I swear the shops move when you're not looking, just to keep tourists on their toes.

Up to the top of the Metropolitan Building we went, because it would be a crime not to go up at least one tall building and I deemed this one to be the least threatening one for someone who doesn't like high things.  Roger was not convinced. 

"Take the photo quickly. I'm too close to the window!  And do you realise that Japan has lots of earthquakes! What if one happens while I'm at the top of a 44 floor building?"

Well arguably he'd be better off there than at street level with 44 floors of building on his head and a tsunami frothing at his feet, but who am I to argue with a height-phobic man? We went back to ground level and had a vending machine coffee to calm his jangling nerves.

"See! We'll be drowned! A tsunami can be up to 15m easy!""

I think he needs to stop reading about natural disasters.

We met some lovely volunteer guides in Shinjuku, performing a dual purpose of practising their English and providing guidance to people like us. They told us that the blossoms had started to open in the Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens and in order to control crowds entry on weekends was subject to a fee and we would be much better to come back on a weekday when all the locals were at work. OK then, off we went to elsewhere.

Roger's back was fading fast. We caught the trains home and stopped off at the local convenience store to buy surprises for dinner, which we ate in our hotel room with plastic konbinbi cutlery.

Living the high life, we are.

Chopstick competence update: still on L plates.