Japan - Free Day in Tokyo

Well, despite being exhausted, neither one of us slept very well and we were awake with the Rising Sun at 4am!! And, what a treat we woke to. It was a beautifully clear day this morning after arriving to the remnants of rain last night. And, behold, we have a view of Mt. Fuji from our room - lovely! Surprisingly, when we got back to the room later today, we couldn’t even tell Mt. Fuji was out there. Goes to show that you need to enjoy life in the moment…

So, we managed to get an early start on our day. We had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel and then went out to explore and get some logistics out of the way. We wanted to purchase a pre-paid card that is widely used for subways and some markets. We had tried a couple of places on our way to the hotel last night, but we either couldn’t understand what any of the station attendants we asked were trying to tell us, or we couldn’t get the machines to spit out a card for us. In any event, that was a good mission for us to focus on today. We also needed to reserve some seats on some trains we plan to take next week. That was another challenge we couldn’t get accomplished last night. So, we headed out to a randomly chosen train station that was near a garden. It was very pleasant just to meander around and soak in the city life of Tokyo. Even though it is a big city, there is a lot of green space around. We saw some beautiful trees that are different from what we are used to. We also came across the Japan Olympics Museum, many vending machines (where you could buy and beer and sake on the street), and lots of examples of interesting architecture and art work. Oh, and we were also able to get a subway card and reserve our train seats - mission accomplished!

Pack night, so we need to try and make it an early night…