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fter a nice “American breakfast” (which was a casual-slow ordeal and had things I’d never seen in a rodeo cookup) we slipped out. Strolled through the Shinjuku Golden-GAI district (narrow streets catering to electronics and eateries) but in this early hour everything as closed and the only motion were the cut-through high-stepping commuters. Nosed into Shinjuku station but were unsure what to make of it, with the noise and flow of humanity. Backed out of that madhouse and decided to look in a different direction. Just west of the hotel, in the shadow of the fifty-story Metropolitan Government Building, there […]

e’d picked up a Minato City tour book from the Tokyo Met building the day before and used it to fragment out some of the longer self-guided tours into short Raymond jaunts. This being the case, we trotted through waves of morning commuters to get to Shinjuku Station to head to our first looksee – the Tokyo Tower. However, for this, we needed to hop on the Oedo Line (like London’s Circle Line, it loops ‘round the city). So it goes like this – image a triangle pointing to the left. We enter on the lower right point, Shinjuko Station. […]

onks at the buffet; what? Apparently there was a monks convention in Kyoto and a number of monks were in our hotel. Came down this morning and saw two (in full orange robes, heads smooth) spooning up the scrambled eggs. Funny thing; as we sat at breakfast, more entered. But they didn’t sit with the first set; two sat apart and one alone. You’d think there would be temple shop-talk and nirvana sightings but no. Seems that monks put their robes on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else. So Yagi-san showed up bright and perky to […]