exo : blah

Friday 29/5 21509 steps

Asaksa jetlagged strolling while waiting for hotel check in. Senso-ji, random park, soba place for dinner. Honestly memory poor, much just random wandering. Foot spa. 7-11 onigiri and pocari sweat lunch by river. Slightly stilted engagement? photo session in Sumida park shrine (koume inari/ushijima-jinja)

Saturday 30/5 17233

Rice with toppings for breakfast, rolled egg, plus bean flakes. Ueno park, market by ueno, national museum, random j pop, great dancing figures in museum, onigiri lunch in park, Korean festival furnace, Pokémon go event, Asakusa pedestrian area and sushi train dinner in evening, automatic sushi place in Rox centre fail. Difficult to open lemonade bottle; Ramune, Codd-neck bottle. Basically just lemonade with a complicated seal. Evening foot spa.

Sunday 31/5 20760

Relaxing Kiyosumi garden in morning, semi lunch fail in Arashi popular bakery, Shinjuku lights and skyscrapers plus not great Italian for dinner. Random local festival.

Monday 1/6 22260

Run in morning, by Sumida river; toasty. Vending machine difficult to open Pocari sweat. Kagurazaka French district but not really. Bakery lunch in park, tasty, very chill, Akaji-jinja shrine, skytree in afternoon, back to soba place and asakusa stroll in evening. Foot spa

Tuesday 2/6 11990

Travel day, Tokyo to Nagano. Shinkansen as pleasant as ever. Train konbini lunch of onigiri and basically crudite plus mono bean paste pancakes. Nagano seems more chill than Tokyo. Free custard pastries in hotel lobby. Izakaya dinner, dumplings, vegetarian! Massage chair in hotel room. Again, free sake in evening.

Wednesday 3/6 15187

Damp in morning so slow start. Nice by afternoon. Edge of storm. Hotel buffet breakfast, two kinds of rice, not the hamburger meat!, good aubergine, pastries, rolled egg of course, lazy morning. Hat and bag shopping, bought a hat, and then Zenko-ji temple in afternoon. Did not go into underground bit, did push round a big prayer wheel thing. Another konbini picnic park lunch and then apple and custard pie post temple. Mini muffins from hotel. Italian for dinner, quite decent. Jet lag bad.

Thursday 4/6 23365

Slept better. Obuse. Weather warm but not stifling, sunny cloudy. Cute train and cuter tickets. Good Hokusai museum with modern stuff in dialog as they say for the 50th anniversary. Lovely art to take away piece. Puzzling Miffy/Hokusai book in gift shop. Then temples, second, Joko-ji, prob better setting but first, Gansho-in, had good mural on ceiling and excellent print of Fuji with a dragon in the smoke. Indoor wheelchairs! Great veg pie/dumpling things (oyaki) for lunch, local to Nagano. Also ice cream. And then excellent soba noodle dinner. English menu but otherwise very Japanese. Also ran, was ok.

Friday 5/6 23471

Slept bad. Glorious weather. Bus into hills at Togakushi for shrine and hiking. Excellent trees. Bought a cute bear bell. Ninja/folk museum. Saw an osprey catch a fish. Pre dinner free sake while waiting for laundry. Back to dumplings place in evening.

Saturday 6/6 19290

Travel day. Much better sleep. Morning stroll round Nagano, warm, more Oyaki for lunch, one baked versus the usual steamed, still tasty, pastries on train from station bakery. Small market in park. Good mountains from the train. Kanazawa station quite full on on arrival. Busy and a lot of announcements. Matsuri in Kanazawa, from right outside the station so we walked immediately into it. Lots of Samurai troops with not really fake battles. Sort of fun. Dance groups in the street after was much better. Clearly loads of company things plus some others. Excellent Yukata. Mostly festival snacks plus free hotel noodles for dinner.

Sunday 7/6 17623

Excellent hotel breakfast; soba broth, rice, not jelly. Twig tea! Wander post breakfast while C did some work, department store and market. Onigiri from little place opposite hotel. Excellent. Then contemporary art museum via Oyama-jinja shrine. Good man walking with styrofoam house on back piece. Nice pen drawings of buildings and diary entries. Good photos of multiple views of castle roof in home town. Quite a bit of meh video. Perhaps unintentionally funny paper shaking thing, sky staring room good. Good staff jumpers and bags, sadly not for sale. muji matcha baumkuchen snack in room. Dinner in place above market, tasty mixed tempura, ungood custard consistency savoury thing that I did not eat. Tried mini bar peach thing, like the sweetest pear drops, did not finish

Monday 8/6 16451

Chicken and rice for breakfast, plus soup and potato salad, good yogurt. Twig tea def good. Weather a bit grey. Slept well. Watched weird croquetesque game. Samurai house. Good carp. Bought funny little sweets. Samurai district good, small. Tourist info to buy multi site pass after online process was too Japanese. City wide umbrella borrowing scheme! Did a chunk of backstreet wandering, also good and small. Excellent coffee place with focaccia for lunch. Kenruoken garden in afternoon. Very nice, trees as construction as much as gardening. Lots of gardeners out cleaning dead flowers from moss as far as we could tell. Looked very restful. Rained. Bought emergency 600 yen umbrella. Sat in little shack in garden for a bit. Soba and tempura for dinner in place in mini shopping centre, because close and was raining. Only one other couple in place but tbf seemed more like a lunch joint.

Tuesday 9/6 27104

Woke up early so ran. Slept good though. Slightly lost in places in run but quite pleasant. Roads by river and backstreets. Some good bridges. Many swallows. Onigiri at breakfast, nom. Laundry and train ticket buying first thing. Then Higashi Chaya district, good, fairly busy. Quiche and hash browns for lunch which was decent and then DT Suzuki museum which was great, mostly for the building. Really good entry corridor, dark and long with floor lighting. And the contemplation space with pool was really good. Also nice that some of it is public facing so you can just sit on a bench and stare in. Then failed to go to craft museum, did go to prefectural art museum, was fine. Then excellent pancakes, almost soufflé like in texture. Also a couple of shrines - Ishiura-jinja, and Kanazawa - plus sacred well. Bit of a wander while C had a meeting. Absolutely the best meal so far, Plat Home. Small plates, whole river fish, tuna sashimi and avocado - excellent, aubergine sashimi which was great, deep fried fish, good cold noodles, incredible bonito seasoned rice, everything excellent, nice wine!

Wednesday 10/6

Slept well, back to pork stew, rice, and jelly for breakfast. Lazy start. Much better weather, mostly blue skies. Brief market wander, bought twig tea and cherries. Market quite quiet. Stroll along river backstreets, Germany bakery lunch. Excellent red bean bun thing. Then art museum sky room and back to Kenrokuen garden in the sun. Very pleasant. Stroll back through castle grounds and then twig tea ice cream in department store basement food court. Earthy, slightly gritty, good. Semi sushi train order on an iPad place in shopping centre for dinner after failing to get in to first choice one. Decent. Quite tired by end.

Friday 11/6 5813

Travel day. Rice with chicken breakfast. Rice cracker gift on leaving, staff took a souvenir photo for us in front of hotel. Fast Shinkansen to Nagano. Excellent mountain views from train. Oyaki from station konbini for lunch plus a donut baumkuchen. Express train to Matsumoto, huge windows, lots of up, great views. Also, good view while train sat at platform of salarymen inhaling noodles from a tiny little kiosk at the station. Then hire car at Matsumoto and drive up in to the mountains which was pretty straightforward, although junction in a tunnel was pretty alarming. Then fancy ryokan. Proper take luggage to room place and slippers everywhere. Huge room, so many light switches I had to make a little map of what they all were. Indoor and outdoor onsen, just lovely. Pre dinner soak. Many course huge dinner with cook your own section. All of it great.

Friday 12/6 9040

Slept well. Very quiet. Very comfy bed. Omg, so much breakfast. So many bits. Rice, soup, trout, excellent egg, steamed veg, yogurt, tea, salad!, village morning market come Japanese pop culture museum/collection. walk up hill for a bit till weather concerns overcame valour. Turns out getting to the top was a five hour round trip so fine to turn round. Then excellent lunch in village cafe - miso pork on rice, mild salmon omelet with chicken rice fail, saved by ordering extra rice, green tea. Followed up with excellent village foot spa, then brief fossil museum. Outdoor cedar onsen in afternoon and then sat in lounge while C had massage. Pre dinner free sake. Dinner highlights were make your own soup, duck loin, roast hida beef, tempura asparagus, persimmon and butter cake.

Saturday 13/6 23399

Travel day. Early start for prompt breakfast. Again huge with a few things I skipped. Then off to parking for bus to Kamikochi. Bought another bear bell. Quite a few recent bear sightings, as in within the last few days. Really very nice. Good mountains and excellent forest walk. Skipped shrine pond due to time and 500 yen each for just sticking head in seemed a bit much. Onigiri picnic lunch. Slightly truncated visit as car needed to be back by 4 but still good. Very busy. Monkeys! Quite swift on the return leg to make sure got the bus. Then Matsumoto. Hotel seems decent. Sofa in room, plenty space. Also washing machine. Small but functional bathroom. Sink and bath tap same. Free snack draw, free pre dinner beer. Sadly the recommended pizza place was shut as they were taking part in world pizza champs in Naples so went to pizza place on the same block as hotel. Decent. Another two person tiny place. Then stroll through town. Looks fun.

Sunday 14/6 23850

Slept great. Once again excellent buffet breakfast. Three kinds of aubergine! Many pastry, rice with tiny fish a bit much at breakfast. Pretty much all Japanese staying in hotel if breakfast is a guide. And then used the washing machine in room and little hanger. Stroll towards castle and then round castle. Very steep stairs, no shoes! Good stuff on history of guns. Onigiri from little shop opposite castle, plus konbini pocari sweat. Sat on bench opposite castle to eat it. Then wander to free restored samurai house, very low key. Had left kitchen stuff in place unlike other ones. Then past old priest house, insanely western, and old school which was wooden but made to look like stone, very convincing. Then run. Fairly hot but ok. Longer than intended because, you know. Dinner was supposed to be soba but place we were aiming for was shut so plan b’d to a little cafe we passed for pasta/salad and chips. Post dinner stroll to see lit up castle. Very good. Turns out doing laundry in room is not great smell wise :(

Monday 15/6 21753

Promptish start for train to Yabuhara for hiking. Very cute two car train. Push button to open doors! One driver system where you enter through back door of front carriage and pick up a ticket and then pay the driver and exit through the front door. Hiking good. Excellent shrine on way out of town and then another thick forest walk. Basically no views and pass itself quite underwhelming. Narai very pretty in a slightly confected way. Also very closed on a Monday. Ice cream and coffee in a cafe at end. Nice chill train ride back to Matsumoto, bought Tokyo tickets at station then chill in hotel. Stroll for Soba for dinner. Good. Backstreets wander back to hotel, partly accompanied by fire engine which just seemed to be touring the streets.

Tuesday 16/6 18067

Slept well. Sunny. Brief stationary store visit for gifts then trip to mall to get a Yukata. Excellent fish out the back of theatre. Great yukata success after initial fail. then sandwich lunch from doutor which was fine. Excellent mountain views from terrace of mall. Stroll back to hotel. Then I did a bit of wandering while C napped, got complimented on hat in outdoor shop, finally bought a Kirin loves Sports generic isotonic drink. Maybe slightly more lemony. Also a maple muji baumkuchen which was good. Brief prod of SF section of bookstore. Understandably lots of classics plus Titanium Noir. Covers quite good. Internal bookstore navigation basically impossible even with translation app. Just different set of words which apparently don’t translate. Then fancy fusion dinner which was excellent. Mild earthquake during dinner which is a first. Did the local wine flight to accompany and some good stuff. Chardonnay much fresher, Cab Sauvignon pretty trad, very tannic, rose a bit less successful, first white decent, unspecified grapes. Food excellent, great brioche and boar, veg and pickle course good, also good mushroom course, maybe a little truffle forward at times. Excellent service. Very reasonable price, esp wine flight. And freebie on leaving.

Wednesday 17/6 15960

Travel day. Slept ok. Sunny, warm. Limited express to Shinjuku. Some confusion as 9 car train but we are in car 12, which did exist. Hotel with city views in Tokyo: Imperial park from our room, Tokyo tower from reception. Bit of a post arrival wander round Shimbashi while C napped. Peak Tokyo. Lots of narrow little lanes lined with incomprehensible amounts of food places. Popped in to bike shop; carbon Brompton wheels, lots of Italian brands. Bike parking elevators! Also some pottering under the railway and same. And then a potter to Hibiya park and bit of GINZA before beer in outdoor faux German beer hall and then sushi train dinner in super cheap and fun place. Some people in there clearly more for the drinking than sushi. GINZA fashion great as was architecture. Switch from GINZA to Shimbashi very funny. Hooters! Which I guess fits with some of the maid bar vibe of Shimbashi which is very clearly aimed at office workers.

Thursday 18/6 20608

Rainy. Lazy start because no hotel breakfast. Then stroll to office building first floor cafe for avocado toast and coffee for breakfast. Quite a few English speaking people having meetings. Asakusa for left in first hotel perfume fetching then lunch in scone cafe. Plain plus blueberry. Quite good. Then more GINZA before mister donut in the park. GINZA full of more fun buildings although if everything is a statement then nothing is a statement. Chunk of clearly pre matsuri stuff happening, floats in office foyers, ropes with paper things etc. Park fine. Bit of packing before beer and edamame and chips in street side izakaya and then back to sushi train place.

Friday 19/6 3000 ish

To airport on the monorail after konbini breakfast in room.