After our visit to the Deer Park in Nara, we boarded the local train to Kyoto. After a 45 minute train ride, we reached Kyoto and from there, we took the Bullet Train back to Tokyo, a little more than two hours of ride. This time, we did not buy the reserved tickets knowing that there would be fewer people going from a small town to Tokyo than the other way around. We were right and we got two seats with no problem all the way back to the big city.
Starting that evening and for the following four days, we would station in Tokyo and plan to make day trips within the GTA area. Stan did all the planning and booking of our accommodation in Japan. This time we wanted to stay in a Ryokan - a traditional Japanese guest house right by the Gotanda train station.
We were able to walk from the station and found the inn by ourselves after asking for directions at the local police station and couple other people on the street. I was in Japan about forty years ago and few Japanese could understand English at the time. But this time, we were surprised that when we asked for directions in English, more Japanese were able to understand us and were most willing to lend us some help.
We checked in the Japanese inn, called Er. on the hotel phone and we were able to meet him at the train station in ten minutes' time at around 8:30pm since his place was also close by. It was very convenient indeed!
After we met Er, at the station, we found a restaurant close by and had our dinner together.
Since we were eating in a Japanese restaurant, the menu was in Japanese. Er has no idea what the menu said and the waiting staff was very busy and with very limited English. Fortunately, we were able to read a few kenji characters and able to order some food from the menu though we were not 100% sure what the dishes were.
Poor, Er, it must have been very difficult for him in Tokyo for the past few weeks without any knowledge of Japanese. There are restaurants with bilingual menus. Stan and I are the adventurous type, always venturing out of our comfort zone to experience and discover new things. All the dishes we ordered were good, except for the pork dish which was too fatty for us. Hey, we did pretty good considering we did not understand the menu.
After dinner, Er, asked us to go and visited his apartment just a stone throw from Gotanda Station.
This is the apartment provided by his company and he has been staying there since he landed in Japan. It is almost identical as the place we stayed in Nara! Small, but has everything and comfortable. We visited with him for about an hour and headed back to our inn.
It was good to see where Er, was staying in Tokyo. Next time when we Skye him, we would know exactly where he is and what his apartment looks like!
R.T.
Tokyo, Japan
Week of Aug. 25, 2013
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