My bed, and Roppongi
My body clock continues to act up. Between 3am and 6am I was unable to sleep and resorted to sitting in our half-length bath, reading a book. Then, I fell asleep and at 10am when Debbie awoke as fresh as a daisy, I was in no state to go anywhere.
We decided that Debbie would go clothes shopping, I would do something independantly when I roused myself, and we would reunite at the hotel at around three. Debbie came back on cue, and I had done nothing but sleep.
This has echoes of our New York trip. After a few days of traipsing around the city, sightseeing, Debbie went shopping so that I could spend some time in the art museums. Instead, though, I spent a whole afternoon napping in the hotel.
This will have been make or break time for my jet lag — either I’ve seen to it by giving my body the sleep it was asking for, or I’m going to wake up in the early hours again this morning, and fail to get back to sleep.
Debbie was primarily in search of t-shirts with meaningless japlish phrases on, and her hunt was wildly successful. The most meaningless reads “Fellows… SPIRIT and how about you!!!” on the front, while the back reads “Adventure resists such me!! Do you have tangle feeling?”
I thought I’d better have a shower and make the most of what was left of the day. We were aiming to get to Roppongi Hills tower before dusk, so as to take in the view from the top. Debbie had gained extensive new knowledge of the Metro system during her morning’s adventures, and we were in Roppongi in no time.
It soon became obvious that the weather was not condusive to views, so we postponed the view from the tower (for which you have to pay) to another day.
We poked around the Roppongi Hills development a little, and found it to be a great disappointment. The guide book enthuses about it, but unless you’re rich enough to stay and the Grand Hyatt Hotel, or dine at the fancy restaurants, all it has is a cinema, a music venue and a load of shops we can’t afford and aren’t interested in anyway. There’s also a TV
studio and offices, which of course, we’re not allowed into. It does have a handsome spider sculpture, which Lonely Planet recommends as a meeting place.
I really don’t see what else Lonely Planet sees in the place.
We walked on to Roppongi-dori, which was more interesting, albeit the usual Tokyo routine of shop, bar and restaurant over and over again, stacked high. The route we followed kept the Tokyo Tower in view - this is an imitation of the Eiffel Tower, but is now dwarfed by other structures nearby.
We popped into a couple of budget shops for a nose around. It turns out a 100 yen shop is pretty much the same as a pound shop at home.
The time had come for food — my first proper meal of the day. We failed to find a sushi place mentioned in the guide book, but instead found an udon restaurant - and what a find it was. Apparently in the situations were the English might have a curry — cheap nosh pre or post pub — the Japanese have noodles. This place combined the two, offering udon noodles in curry sauce. The servings were absolutely enormous, and the sauce was similar to balti if a little sweeter. Debbie had beef curry, while I had curry with deep fried tofu. I couldn’t even finish mine, there was so much of it.
On the way back to the hotel, we had the adventure of shopping in a pharmacy — looking for handwash liquid and painkillers. Let’s hope it was painkillers I ended up with. “I don’t want you getting Viagra by mistake” said Debbie.
Despite constant looking, we have been unable to locate the delicious wasabi coated peanuts Ruth and Dave enjoyed in Japan. We’ll keep trying.