Arrived back in Yokohama yesterday morning.
Took the shuttle over the bridge to Yokohama pier and waved down a taxi to take us into Tokyo city, whereupon he drove us back over the bridge, past our ship and on along a very efficient underground motorway to our hotel.
It was a warm and sunny day, and we were too early to check in, so we wandered around the city for a couple of hours. We’re staying in the Shinjuku district, a busy area for shops and nightlife, very popular with tourists.
We had lunch in a little non touristy sushi bar. Before ordering, you buy the relevant voucher out of a machine. I’d never come across such a system before, but the waiter managed to explain it to us eventually, with minimal spoken language and lots of miming, and we had a nice meal in the end.
We visited a couple of parks. As it turns out, we’ve managed to miss the spring blossoms entirely, showing that I completely misunderstood what Golden Week was all about. Never mind. Everything was lovely and green, as explained by the downpours of the following two days of our time here. We met this cute doggie in one park. He looks a little inscrutable in this pic, but in fact he was a very jolly little chap, bouncing around his well dressed owner happily.
We visited another enormous park, but because it was the location of a major temple, you weren’t allowed to do any of the normal park-like things, like ride a bike, or walk your dog, or even sit on the grass, so it seemed a bit of a waste of green space to me.
Our hotel, the Regency Hyatt, is fabulous and well located. Look at these lovely chandeliers in the lobby:
And this is the view from the lift going to our room on the 25th floor (from today, in the rain):
After checking in yesterday, and a short nap, we got glammed up and went out looking for somewhere to eat. We tried a couple of places nearby but couldn’t get a table without a reservation. In the end we slunk back our hotel and had dinner there. It was an authentic Japanese degustation in the end and extremely delicious if filling, so that worked out well.