Day 0-1, E-ville to Tokyo

Day 0-1: E-ville to Tokyo

QOTD:  Do you have plans for Rio?

Weather: Mid 60s in E-ville and low 80s in Tokyo

Pics: transport to Tokyo, our bags (two four wheelers and Rick Steve), competition for the London Eye

Breakfast at Brown Sugar: eggs over easy, spicy potatoes, thick wheat toast for THB, DB has scrambled eggs, bacon (terrific, she shares with THB) and biscuit (no sharing!), $25.

Lunch on the 12:30pm non-stop to Tokyo includes the best airplane food ever for THB. It is the “Japanese” cuisine option, loaded with small tastes of seafood, smoked duck (excellent) and the Shusai (main course?): Sake-steamed salmon with mushrooms rich broth (258 kcal), and it is 2 star worthy.

We’re in business class on United miles, and the seats are so large and private that we can’t talk to each other. We land around 3:30pm, pick up a local phone at Narita airport, take a slow bus (Friday eve traffic before a 3 day holiday weekend here), check-in at the Park Hotel in Shiodome (near where we stayed in 2010), meet Fusao (our guide on the Nakasendo walk which starts Monday, more about him later, he’s the quoter of the day), and have dinner at Chaya, a macrobiotic place in the Shiodome center. Veggie curry and brown rice for THB, DB has eggplant and brown rice, two glasses one wine, one draft brewski, $39. Asleep at 8pm, up and organizing our “free” day at 4:30am (decent for jet lag).

Book Review: THB starts and finishes the Hare with the Amber Eye, Edmund de Waal. He’s a world-class ceramicist who decides, after inheriting a collection of netsuke, to trace part of his family history from Odessa to France in the 1850s, Vienna in the late 1800s through WWII, and Tokyo from 1950s to present. It is a very powerful book, his family was wealthy, financial, and Jewish until the holocaust changed everything. Recommended