I had to get up early to get to the office to make sure things were going to be ready for the class. Daniela and I went down to the hotel restaurant and found out breakfast was not included but we paid 1000 yen (about $10 each and ate anyway). The breakfast foods were mainly Japanese. Grilled fish, rice, salad, pickles, but some small amounts of western breakfast food too. I am sure I didn't eat $10 worth of food but Daniela stayed because we got down a little bit late for my meeting time of 8am with Han to get to the office. I think we had maybe 20 minutes. She said that she made sure we got our money's worth of food after I left.
Han and I met in the lobby of the hotel and walked to the Asakusa Station of the Tsukuba Express train line. I bought round trip tickets and we rode the line to the Kashiwanoha-Campus stop which is the station nearest to Hitachi. We took a taxi to the office from the train station. It cost us about 1090 yen. At the facility we checked in with security and they called Watanabe-san to get us. We only waited a couple of minutes. We were brought to a conference room and we met with him and a translator and went over the details of the class in brief. They have 3 systems ready or will be by the time class starts on Tuesday after lunch. Two of them will be sold to customers so they have to be treated with white gloves (he actually showed us the bag of white gloves). I also wouldn't be able to do some class time stuff I expected to do with all the systems with the 2 being sold. We saw the classroom and the training lab area (amusingly their lab is on a different floor than their classrooms just like at home. We arranged what would happen in the class and then he let us go probably by 10:30am. We took a taxi to the train station and rode the train back to the hotel where we parted ways for the evening.
Daniela was in the room doing some work when I got back. We got her ready to go out after she rearranged the room a bit to fit both of our stuff in better. We headed to Hamamatsucho so I could show her Tokyo Tower while we were communicating with Marina about meeting up with her. We took the Toei Asakusa line to Daimon and walked through the Zojo-ji temple on our way up to the tower. We made it to the tower but Marina was done her appointment and on her way to Hamamatsucho so we only had time for Daniela to get a huge crepe wrapped chocolate cheesecake and ice cream dessert thing without going up to the top. Since it was windy and cloudy we decided we could do it another day/night. We walked back to the World Trade Center building right outside the Hamamatsucho JR station and within a couple minutes Marina arrived.
We decided to take a late sort of lunch at the top of the World Trade Center building. That is the 39th floor and has a great view of the harbor. I am not sure of the name of the restaurant. I think it does tea time lunch then turns into a French restaurant for dinner. I had a mixed pizza which had bacon and shrimp on it besides the cheese and sauce. I forgot to take a picture this time. They do their pizza very thin and often crispy crust. It was good. Daniela had their Japanese curry and I think she liked it though she thought there was too much rice. Marina had eaten so she got a coffee and a creme brulee since she had lunch. The food was nice though there wasn't much coffee for a cup with no refills. I had a coffee too.
After lunch we walked over to Kaji and arranged our anniversary dinner with Kajima-san and then walked through Shiodome on to Ginza. Daniela got to see some of the sights she had not yet seen. We really just walked and talked for an hour and a half or so then Marina had to part ways so we left her in Ginza where she could take an easy train to home. Daniela and I walked on to see the Godzilla statue then by accident found a small display of stitchwork art that was being shown in a building near the statue. The location we were in was not great for taking a train back to Hamamatsucho so we took a cab there. I fell to the JR station as a reference point the cab driver could understand. It was maybe a 5 minute ride and almost completely straight after one left at Hibiya Park. We arrived to Hamamatsucho too early for our 8pm reservations so we walked to a dance school Daniela had noticed when we went to make the reservations and she talked to the instructor for a bit. He was able to speak English well but he apparently has a teacher who speaks English better that would be back in a week after going to a competition. They taught ballroom dances it appeared. We were still a bit early so we walked to a place to sit inside for a few minutes. During that time it started to rain. We made our way quickly to Kaji at 8 while dodging raindrops.
We ordered the Kobe beef Kaji Special for each of us and again the meal was incredible. The gentleman to my right at the table, Matsumoto-san was able to speak English well and we had some nice conversation with him and Daniela and he even traded business cards. He worked in shipping fish and was very nice. Had been to Boston (well, New Bedford) a couple of times but had not yet been to Peru though he said he wanted to go. They shared with us some of their sparkling red wine and even their Spanish sherry that Daniela was incredibly impressed with during the course of the meal. The starter was a shrimp, bean and small beef slice assortment. Then he made the radishes, the onion and pumpkin and the potatoes along the way. From there it was time for the beef with the garlic chips. Then on to the beef cracklings and then the garlic fried rice. Lastly was the mango and coffee. We ordered a bottle of French Beaujolais to go along with the meal. It was not the best wine ever but was nice enough to handle what we ate. Everything was as good as I remembered and yet again I was happy with the meal completely.
With all the extra alcohol I think we were both a bit tipsy by the time we left. The rain was stronger and Kajima-san gave us an umbrella (I think we will try to return it to him later in the trip). We walked to the Daimon train station and took the train back to Asakusa. There were some really drunk people on the train including someone who almost took the wrong briefcase and maybe didn't get his phone as they tried to give it to him before the door closed. We fortunately weren't that drunk. Even then I think we barely got in the room after the walk from the train station before both of us were sound asleep for the night.
The pictures from Japan Day 3 are located here.
No comments:
Post a Comment