15 November 2019
Back to the big city
From Koriyama to Tokyo on the Shinkansen
Now I am back in Tokyo, Korea town on the outskirts of Shinjuku to be precise, it will be my last stop.
I still have 6 more nights here, which means probably 3 more hikes, 2 days of doing not much, today and the day I go home... yeah that adds up. That will be weather dependent of course.
From Koriyama to Shinjuku is a 90 minute bullet train ride followed by a normal rapid Chuo line train from Tokyo station to Shinjuku followed by a small walk through Kabukicho to Korea town. I see Korean food in my future.
The train today was not very full, which was lucky, the guy next to me had 2 laptops, an ipad, an iphone and a flip phone on the go. From what I could understand, he was using Microsoft excel on one laptop, copying a pdf version of an excel file on the other laptop, using his ipad to look up help on how to use excel and using his two phones as calculators. Everyone around us was marveling at his amazing efficiency, not even one fax machine or pager was needed.
I have not stayed in Shinjuku the last couple of trips, it is full of tourists including me, and full of places I would like to eat at which all have full English menus everywhere. On some street corners, tourists outnumber locals. Also the robot cafe which I have never been to and will never go to now seems to occupy 9 blocks of Kabukicho. Theres at least 5 different buildings acting as ticket offices, as well as waiting area buildings and marketing buildings.
I got up early and walked a lap of Koriyama. Excellent weather today, it really should have been a hiking day.
Another shot of blue sky from a convenient overpass. A woman reading her phone walked into me as I was standing here and got very angry at me for being in her way! Its forbidden to eat or drink and walk at the same time in Japan, reading your phone and walking into people is fine though.
View from Koriyama station. Nice clouds.
View of Koriyama station. Also nice clouds.
Todays picture from a moving train features flat terrain. Its nearly all flat from Koriyama back to Tokyo.
This is just before stopping at Utsonomiya, which i basically the start of the built up Tokyo metropolitan area. From this point on its all city.
Guess what? I was too early to check in, so I went and did a bit of Scientology. Inside tip - the aliens are coming out of the volcano some time next week.
Heres a crossing near Shinjuku station, on the wrong side of the tracks.
A view back to the right side of the tracks as a train goes overhead.
And heres my last boring APA hotel photo of this trip. It is a weird setup, the bed is backwards with a bar area behind it. The TV is behind where I sit here typing this, and is the biggest tv yet. Having said all that, its probably the newest room I have stayed in on this trip, you can tell because it has more power points. There are 5 different APA hotels within 100 metres of here.