Japan - Day 8: Romancecar & Google Tokyo

A nice refreshing night of sleep again followed by our last ryokan meal. These meals were really something else. Here are final shots of our breakfast courses. Sashimi for breakfast too!

After breakfast, we packed up for the train station (one thing to note -- even though we packed quite lightly for the trip, I still think we packed too much. It's so much easier to pack up when there isn't much to gather or keep track of. Will need to continue working on lightening the load for future trips!).

Parting shot of Madoka No Mori. Strong two thumbs up for the ryokan. Yes, it was a bit pricey, but when you factor in the fact that there were elaborate dinners and breakfasts, on-demand shuttles to all the stations, fancy onsen (both downstairs and in room), and the overall service levels, I think it was worth it. 

It is expected to be a bit rainy at times today, which works out great for us since it's mostly a travel day. I'm actually glad we get to use our raincoats otherwise I will have packed them for no reason! 

The ride back on the switchback train was quite nice -- it was much less crowded this time so we got to hear all of the commentary -- second steepest train of this sort in the world!

 

I forget the name of this bridge but the commentary said this view was considered a highlight of the trip.

We got to the station with plenty of time to spare before our Romancecar reservation, perfect for a trek in search of more dango (sticky rice skewers) and smoothies!

Getting tickets for the Romancecar observation deck was another one of those "set an alarm and click things as quickly as you can once reservations open" experiences. The view was very nice...though as you can see, the twins found the view on their tablets more enticing...

I snapped a few shots of the Japan countryside. Though largely the train was moving so quickly that pictures were difficult. I kept seeing groves of cherry blossom trees...and then as soon as I whipped out the phone, they were gone. 

We made it into Shinjuku around 1pm -- the plan was to immediately catch the subway over to Shibuya and grab lunch at the Google Tokyo office before it closed at 2. I'm happy to report that we were successful! I really appreciate the ten little plates of different things for each meal style of eating. 

After lunch, I headed over to the mailroom to pick up the luggage (so convenient, will have to keep this strategy in mind for future travels as well!) and then we headed up to the top 35th floor to check out the city view. That's Tokyo Tower to the right (red and white Eiffel Tower lookalike), the Skytree is hard to see in the photo but it's more in the center amongst the clouds. 

I think we could have stayed for awhile -- comfy chairs, great view, barista with drinks right by your side -- but we were anxious to get our luggage and check in to the hotel. 

As we were leaving, the kids even got to hold one of the official Tokyo Olympic torches that they had on display in the lobby. Pretty cool!

So picking up the luggage was probably the lowest point of the entire trip. Warning to everyone traveling to Japan who use Androids and not iPhones...because you can't load your Suica card (the transportation card, good for trains, busses, subways, and you can also pay for vending machines and convenience stores) on the phone -- you MUST use cash to add value to the cards. There is NO option to use a credit card to recharge the cards. Unfortunately, we did not bring very much cash...so we found ourselves stuck trying to get our luggage out of the coin lockers...which ONLY took payment by Suica cards...and an insufficient balance on the card. This led to a roughly one hour ordeal involving attempts to find ATMs, attempts to explain the situation to the train station attendants, being led around in circles (literally) because they kept not understanding that our luggage was trapped in the locker (they kept thinking we were just trying to leave). Eventually I had to ask a random passerby to change a $20 bill for some yen. There was one attendant at the JR Station that was extremely rude -- he was really the single black mark for the entire trip so far -- even when folks were unhelpful, they were still very nice and apologetic about their inability to help but this guy was just rude! I wish I had gotten his name. 

The experience was so unpleasant that once we finally got the luggage, we opted to take a taxi from the station to the hotel instead and I poured myself a nice glass of sake once we got to the lounge. I sadly didn't get a photo, but the stress of the afternoon was also smoothed over by the yummy mango puddings served at the lounge happy hour. I'm pretty sure we downed at least a half dozen of them.

No other plans for the day, the rain was now coming down with lightning and thunder too, so we stayed in for the rest of the night. Here's a final shot of the day of random cherry blossoms in the courtyard. 

Tomorrow is our last full day in Japan -- gotta make the most of it!