Since Kyoto, we’ve been in relatively small places with relatively small buildings. That changed today! We caught the bullet train to Tokyo and when we finally found the exit from the station we were surrounded by very tall buildings, to the point where our map app was struggling to find us.
We decided to walk to the hotel to get a feel of things, but we made a pit stop on the way for a coffee and pastry. It was a bit like being in Caffè Nero in Oxford, full of young people studying.
We found the hotel without any trouble, it had Mandarin Oriental plastered across the ground floor facade, but we couldn’t find reception. We asked at an information desk and they directed us to the hotel’s elevator and told us to take it to the 38th floor. Our room is only on the 35th floor, but it still has a great view from the wall to wall windows at one end.
They even supply a pair of binoculars in the room to give you a better view. You can look down on the bay and look up at the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower and third tallest structure in the world. It was built because the Tokyo Tower was no longer tall enough to provide full TV broadcasting coverage because of all the other high rise buildings around it.
This evening we had a special meal laid on for us by the travel company to apologise for some issues we had earlier in the year. We decided to go on the metro, one line of which has a station right under the hotel. It isn’t the line we wanted, but there is an interchange with our line if you don’t mind a 10 minute walk against the tide of home going workers. We travelled one stop on the purple line to another large station that seemed to be an interchange to lots of other lines. They give each exit a number, which makes it very easy to find your destination, in our case exit A13c, which is in the basement of the Palace Hotel.
We found our restaurant on the sixth floor. We’d booked a Teppanyaki meal, where the chef cooks the food on a grill in front of you. And because we couldn’t decide, we went for a set meal with 10 courses! The place setting included a bib, which the waitress very firmly covered us up with. Things we’d never had before included soft shell turtle, abalone and sea urchin. Things we are unlikely to ever try again include soft shell turtle, abalone and sea urchin!
The other courses were excellent, especially the Kobe beef chateaubriand, something I wouldn’t normally eat.
The whole meal took over two hours, and it’s fair to say we were both feeling pretty chubby when we left.
Steve and Diane on Tour 