As you’ve obviously noticed, there wasn’t a blog yesterday. So, today you get two for the price of one! Don’t say we don’t spoil you.
Anyway, yesterday we arrived in Toyko – which was only a three hour train ride, mostly on the Shinkansen. We found the way back to our hotel mostly by bits of memory from our last stay (but had the GPS ready just to be safe). After checking in, checking the room and checking mails, we started a small tour to check the neighborhood. Not much changed, as far as we could tell with all the rain. But we already had our first target anyway: The GPS Store, which was also supposed to have geocaching stuff – and we were in need of some trackables. That gave us our first new experience with the Tokyo rush hour. Whoever is working on data-compression algorithms, should check the trains in Tokyo and learn something (if that’s how to or how to not, is up to them). We found the shop, got our geo coins and that was about it for the day, except dining on Curry.
Today we expected some cloudy weather, so instead of heading to a major location (which all need clear weather for a good sight) we started exploring the town with geocaching. It led us through the urban Tokyo (which surprisingly looked almost rural in some areas), some parks and the usual stuff (but no food this time). It was nice walking through Tokyo again and we will enjoy the in the next few days as well. We just have to figure out when we’ll do what, since the weather isn’t very stable.
On a personal note, a very important stop was at the end of the day: Shopping at a 100 Yen shop, where everything costs 100 Yen (duh) plus 5% taxes. Important because my jeans started to rip at the knee and I needed to fix this. It’s really amazing what stuff you find in those shops, really about anything to start a household and more. But we already learned from another 100 Yen shop that not everything is cheap. While a bottle of Calpis was 88 Yen in a high class super market in Naha, it did – of course – cost 100 Yen at the 100 Yen shop a little to the north. Anyway, we got everything we needed and more, so I could stitch up those jeans while the rest of our dirty cloths were spinning around to get clean and dry.