18122012 Late Autumn in Tokyo

Mid-December of 2012, took a week-long holiday off from work because I was pretty much exhausted by a lot of things and just needed a break. Settled for Tokyo again to meet up with some friends and a short trip out of town. It was late autumn when I arrived, and winter was just around the corner, and the freezing temperature reminded me of that when I disembarked from the plane.

Since I had arrived much earlier than expected, made use of the free wifi in Narita airport to check for the train schedule, then decided on the fastest, least hassle way to get to Oimachi, where I was staying. Took the JR Express to Shinagawa, then switched to the local train for Oimachi. Costs a little more than slower trains, but I didn’t wanted to be stuck on one for more than 2 hours.

Hotels in Japan usually allows check-in after 2pm, so left my baggage with them and headed out for the Tokyo National Museum. From Oimachi, took the direct train to Ugusuidani, one of the 2 stops which close access to the museum (the other being Ueno Park). However despite it being a small station, I still got lost trying to find the exit which leads to Ueno Park and spent a long time figuring the signs out before finally locating it. At the exit, one could see the graveyard which was located exactly right next to the station, and no wonder my colleagues were making a fuss about this station being haunted.

Haunted or not, the parks and trees surrounding it made it a nice long walk to the museum. I made it just in time for the last of the brown autumn leaves, but most of the ginko trees were already bare.

The museum was having a special exhibition on Chinese artifacts, but decided to skip it since I had seen enough back in Taiwan, so just went for the regular exhibitions instead. The cute ticket was to commemorate the museum’s 140th anniversary.

Spent a total of around 4 hours in the museum, and was very happy with my decision to come here. Managed to see the clay pot from the Jomon period, which we had to study about back in university, and there was even a letter written by Sen no Rikyu on display. Was just reading about him and his role during the Sengoku period days before.

Went back to my hotel and had lunch at Otoya which was a floor below it, and the huge pork cutlet made the wait worthwhile, plus it was only 870yen for the huge serving with rice and soup. Finally could check into my room and had a nice long nap since I couldn’t sleep on the flight to Tokyo last night.

Came evening, headed out to Shibuya to meet up a friend for karaoke. Originally we wanted to take the 3 hours package, but then the staff told us that the 5 hours package was cheaper than the 3 hours one, so we went for it. It also comes with a free flow of drinks. I love karaoke in Japan, plus it’s an excuse to try every single drink they have available, which is a lot. So we were at the karaoke from 6pm all the way till 10.30pm. Did not finish the 5 hours allowance because halfway through, we started running out of songs and voices, and ended up being hooked onto their free flow of corn soup instead.

By the time we walked back out to the station to catch the trains back, my voice was cracking, and the other was complaining about how he wouldn’t be able to attend his classes for university tomorrow.