Tokyo – part 2a (back to Shinjuku)

I can’t believe it’s already been about five months since my friend and I went to Japan, and I’m barely even halfway through blogging about it. But I’ve come, at last, to one of the highlights of the trip (I probably have too many “highlights” from the trip, but who’s counting and/or enforcing a limit? If you are – stop it. That was a rhetorical question anyway.)

Ok, so after I started writing this, and got a few paragraphs in, I realised I was doing that thing again whereby I write this long preamble, and don’t quite get to the point. So, originally, I was planning to skim over the events of February 9th, and get onto our visit to Mt Fuji (which was the aforementioned highlight), but looks like that’s not gonna happen in this post. Even if you’ve enjoyed reading about my Japan trip so far, feel free to skip this one, and wait for the Mt Fuji post (hopefully coming up very soon).

After our trip to Otaru, KF and I flew back to Tokyo the following day (Feb 9). It was actually really sad leaving Sapporo. I’m sure I’ve said this before (maybe not here (?) but I’ve said it to someone) but I really felt quite at home in Sapporo – we both did. (KF said it was probably her favourite city in Japan, which surprised me because she dislikes the cold almost as much as I dislike the heat.)

If I had to live somewhere outside of Australia, Sapporo would probably be one of the first places I’d consider. Having said that, I have no idea what it’s like there in the middle of summer, so if it’s ridiculously hot/humid, I’m gonna have to scratch it from the list. (I’ve been told that Tokyo gets really bad in the summer, heat/humidity-wise, hence my apprehension.)

Anyway, once back in Tokyo (probably at least mid-afternoon by then), I suppose we were both a bit tired. It was like we’d had a holiday within our holiday, and had just returned home (Shinjuku – and specifically Sunroute Plaza – kind of felt like home too). We spent most of what remained of that day in the hotel, venturing out only for food (which I brought back to the hotel anyway). It was also half raining, half snowing in Tokyo that day, so we thought maybe that was a sign to stay inside. (I probably would’ve gone out if it was just snowing, though.)

Side note: in case you missed my “part 1” posts about Tokyo, we stayed at Sunroute Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, and it was excellent – highly recommended!

With random food, snacks and drinks from the nearby shopping centre (Shinjuku Station is attached to a massive shopping centre (or several shopping centres?) and Sunroute Plaza is very close to Shinjuku Station), and with even more drinks from the hotel vending machine, we were pretty happy campers that day. Well, we also had to get some laundry done. That was a good thing about Sunroute: they had a coin laundry in the building. I don’t think our other hotels had that (I know ANA in Sapporo didn’t).

There was probably a time in my life when I would’ve thought it was a colossal waste to spend any significant portion of a holiday (and an overseas holiday at that!) inside a hotel room, rather than out exploring, but it was actually a good way to spend the afternoon/evening. I’d probably even say it was a necessary rest, and it gave us the chance to just pause and talk.

And, jeez, even cheap take-away food is good there.

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