After the quick breakfast downstairs which again consisted of coffee and toast and was mainly for the coffee I headed back to Hamamatsucho Station where I rode the Yamanote line to Tokyo Station. There I exited the station with the intention of heading east to Nihombashi but got turned around by the local area map signs a bit before I found my way to where I wanted to go. The Nihombashi Bridge is a central bridge to the ancient city of Edo. I saw the bridge in a movie I watched on the flight to Peru and decided I should visit it this trip. It has a couple statues of kirin and dragons on it. Admittedly it was not a long visit but it was cool to see and well worth it.
I then headed north to Asakusa (or at least tried before I had to give up and get on a subway train and get to Asakusa that way. Again I let the signs with their tiny compasses for north turn me around so I basically ended up in a circle. A full city map would probably have helped me greatly since I seemed not to be able to rely on the local area maps as infrequent as they were. In any event, I did make it to Asakusa and wandered around there for a couple hours. That meant of course visiting the Sensoji Temple aside from the basic temple area shops. I didn't buy anything except one of the deep fried bean paste filled cookies we found before. To me it is a must to have one. This time I tried the special bean paste filled on. It was a yellow filling and sweet but very tasty. I was happy with the choice. In keeping with tradition I also decided I may as well get my fortune from the numbered stick game. This time I got a "small fortune." It sounded bad at the name but basically it said if I was good that I would get what I want. Thank you Santa Claus. In any event it is better than my initial run of "The lowest fortune" I am certain. I spun around the area a couple times and found a couple things I would buy on the return trip to Asakusa after I get back from Sapporo. No sense in having to carry extra back and forth there. In spinning around the area I found another larger temple that almost no one was visiting called Honganji Temple. In looking it up it is famous for a statue I failed to see when I was there. I also found a couple smaller temples that I couldn't get the names of while I was looking around. When I had exhausted my stay at Asakusa I did much better walking back to Ueno Station basically getting in the right direction and not getting lost this time now that I better understood the maps. At Ueno Station I rode back to Hamamatsucho and walked over the the Mosburger for lunch. By this point it was past 1pm and I was fairly hungry but also fully drained by the heat and dehydrated. My various purchases had exhausted my small change so I couldn't buy drinks from a vending machine and I didn't think the various convenience stores were going to break the large bills on such a small purchase so I waited until I bought lunch to get a drink which was too long. I got a melon soda for a drink and a double Mos cheeseburger with fries. The burger was really good but the special sauces they put on it all shot out of it at basically the first bite. I will have to learn how to eat them properly in the future so this doesn't happen. In any event it was quite good and I would much rather we had a Mosburger in the US than what we do have there for burger joints.
After lunch I hit the corner convenience store and bought some Pocari Sweat, water, a raspberry Kit Kat and some grape chewy things. I drained the Pocari Sweat on the walk to the hotel where I chose to relax in the AC and get some fluids in me for a little while before heading back out into the city. I decided this time I would visit the Meiji Shrine which is out by Harajuku. Again, Yamanote Line to Harajuku Station then basically it a quick u-turn and you are in the shrine's grounds. I remembered that from the last trip. I was quite happy that I did. After doing the quick circuit of the shrine which was in the process of closing down for the night after a little bit of time in there I chose to walk through Harajuku a bit. It looks (like a lot of Tokyo districts) to be a main shopping area. I believe it is one that the younger folk are currently hanging around in. That of course changes every so often and I am not sure if those statements are current or not but that was something I read on the web anyway. In any event I was tempted to into a few stores not for shopping but because you could feel the obvious AC pouring out of the doors. I do wonder if it was intentional to try to draw people in with the heat and humidity. I suspect it was. Anyway, I didn't bother to go into any of them and instead turned again off the beaten path and wandered a bit until I ended up at Yoyogi Station which is also on the Yamanote Line. Along the way I found a rugby stadium, a baseball park and the 1964 Olympic Stadium. I believe the home team for the baseball park was the Swallows. Not totally sure though. From Yoyogi Station I rode back to Hamamatsucho and went back to the hotel. I spent a few minutes soaking my legs because my calves had really tightened up. I also drank the Sapporo Premium I had bought the night before while I did this. It was pretty comfortable and felt nice even if it doesn't turn out to help my calves.
Honestly by the time I was done with that I still wasn't that hungry, probably because of all the heat so I chose to skip dinner and just stay in for the night and relax. It was after all my intention to climb Fuji on the next day and my legs could use the rest.
The pictures from today are posted here.
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