The short vacation is all over, alas. We're in Narita Airport waiting for our flight in the Premier Lounge (Noel has been flying enough that we can come in here, plus we upgraded to business class for the trip home). We have a late flight out -- 7pm -- so we were able to do a bit of our usual silliness today.
Tonight is our last night at the charming modernist Ryokan Andon. We've really enjoyed staying here; it's out of the center of the city so while we have a longish subway ride, the neighborhood is delightfully quiet.
This morning we had breakfast downstairs for the first time (it's a Western breakfast, so we haven't been that interested). Then we set out for our day's adventures in the city. We got an earlier start than usual, so there are more photos today.
We got off to a bit of a late start today on account of some phone calls and general lazing around we were up to in the morning.
The thing I love about this city is how nicely information is displayed. This sign in the Metro station by our ryokan has the station name in Kanji and English alphabets, the stop number (H01, etc., with the H standing for Hibiya, which is the name of the grey line) and then the time to get to that station. On the bottom are the connections. Very easy to parse, for both Japanese and non-Japanese speakers.
After a little mishap with the airline (in which my flight from LAX to Tokyo took off without everybody on my flight from SFO to LAX), I did finally get to Tokyo yesterday, had a nice soba dinner and basically passed out instantly. This morning we slept in then went out to look at the city.
Here's what I woke up to:
