This year my brother and I decided to attend the Japanese MotoGP at Motegi.
Being only about 3 months out and with no knowledge about the how's and
where's, Dave decided to make it easy and booked us with
Pole Position Travel. Pole Position organise everything for you so we didn't have to worry about
anything, we had 4 nights accomodation in Utsunomiya including breakfast and 2
nights dinners with a special guest speaker, buses to and from the track, and
grandstand tickets all at a reasonable cost. Not bad at all I thought.
Flying from Brisbane to Narita airport, Tokyo was an easy 8-9hr jaunt. It was
over before we knew it.
Touching down at 5:40pm we bought a Suica card at the airport to use on the
train system, we then caught the train into Tokyo, but halfway we had to swap
trains then cross to another station and get another train. Sounds easy, not
so much when you don't really know where you're going and can't read anything
because it's in Japanese, although the screens on the trains do change to
English thankfully.
First thing I noticed was how clean the trains here are. No graffitti at all,
the windows are clean, the seats are clean and the floors so clean you could
eat off it. The train system in Japan is very cheap and efficient, runs on
time like clockwork.
We arrived at our hotel in Ryogoku, the APA Hotel & Resort Ryogoku Eki Tower which was right next to the station and
close to a restaurant district. Choosing somewhere to eat was more difficult
than expected and then ordering became even harder, but we figured it out
eventually. Bīru o kudasai. I can't believe how cheap food and alcohol is
here in Japan. A large beer was only 499 Yen or $4.99 Au, that'd be $15 back
home. I'm not sure what the beer ball was.
View of Tokyo from our Hotel room.
We literally had one night in Tokyo. Next day we needed to make our way to
Utsunomiya via the bullet train but that would be later in the afternoon, so
after breakfast we went out to explore a little around the hotel. I wanted to
visit the Tokyo Skytree so we set off walking to do a bit of a touristy thang.
We came upon this park which housed the Tokyo Memorial Hall. Inside were
pictures hanging on the walls from Nagasaki and Hiroshima the day after the
bombings. So much devastation from those blasts but it saved even more lives
than an invasion would have taken.
Dave had a big grin on his face. He just used his phone to translate the sign
in the pond. What do you think it says he said to me. "Something
inspirational" I replied. He showed me the translation - Do not throw coins in
the pond. We both laughed.
Tokyo Memorial Hall
I like the Japanese gardens that are scattered around the city, with babbling brookes and waterfalls with small arched bridges. Very beautiful.
We didn't have much time to linger so kept walking. Dave said "which way", I
just said look up and follow that big tower so it was quite easy.
The Skytree is so tall the top of it was in the clouds. It stands at 634
metres high. There are 2 viewing decks, the first deck is at 350m and the second deck
is at 450m. I could see cloud envelope the top deck as it passed by. We have to
do both decks, not sure what the view from the top will be like if its in cloud.
One thing we noticed whilst walking was how clean Tokyo streets are.
They were very clean, no graffitti anywhere and looked swept or pressure
cleaned. Was a nice surprise as I depicted it would be a dirty place being the
largest city
in the world.
We saw this little Honda Super Cub outside a coffee shop on our way to the
tower. We sold one of these out of dads shed last year, it wasn't in this
condition though. It took us about an hour to get to the tower. From the
base of the Skytree it looked huge.
Entry cost was $35Au each to go to both levels, what the heck it's not
like we are going to be here again anytime soon. The elevator was the
fastest one I've ever been in, it was climbing at 600m per minute and took
about 30 seconds to reach the tembo deck(350m).
Looking out from the tembo deck all we could see was city for as far as the
eye could see. You really do get the scale of Tokyo from up here. It is a
massive city.
The cloud was low today so we couldn't see Mt Fuji, just city. This place is
crazy huge. Cloud was skimming past us on the top level(450m) obscuring our
views momentarily. I couldn't see any fields or mountains, just city. It
just goes on and on.
Looking back at our Hotel(white building in middle next to green roof)
The Japanese are manga crazy with a big display at the top of the Skytree.
I've got no idea who or what these manga characters are.
Senso-Ji Temple
They had the obligatory glass floor that you can stand on. Yeah that was a
long way down.
We came back down from the tower and suddenly discovered something
unexpected. It was about lunchtime and we needed to have lunch at this
place, only for the novelty factor of course. Japanese Oktoberfest. It was
over priced(genuine Sydney prices) and a bit lame but we loved every minute
of it just the same. What could possibly go wrong?
Yours truly ordering pretzels and beer, no speaky Japanesy. Lots of finger pointing.
Biru
Cheers Bro welcome to Jay Pan
It was time to walk back to the hotel and pick up our bags and head to the
train station. We chose to walk along the river on our way back.
We were amazed at this strange site on top of this building. Dave said it looked like a turd. Sadly googling it when I got home it is the global headquarters building for Asahi Breweries with restaurant and bars serving beer straight from the factory. The monument is called the flamme d'Or. Its meant to be the Asahi golden flame but has been nicknamed the golden turd.😂 But we were on a mission to be somewhere else. The building is meant to look like a golden beer with a frothy head. If only we had more time.....
We stopped at a Japanese sword museum but didn't have much time to look
around, there was this beautiful little park out the back. I was taking
some photos in the park and heard a big splash and scream. A tourist had
slipped and fallen into the pond. Had a damn good laugh at that.
How to make a samurai sword in ezy steps.......
Walking through these parks almost makes you forget your in the
biggest city in the world.
Grabbing our bags at the hotel we made our way to the station to catch a train
to Tokyo station so we could then get the bullet train to Utsunomiya. Tokyo
station was an eye opener, it's so big and we only saw a small part of it. I think the bullet train cost about $47Au so fairly reasonable.
We saw a convenience store on the platform, I grabbed us 2
beers to enjoy on the trip. So long for now Tokyo, we packed in a bit in just over half a day.
I must say the Japanese are a pretty organised people. They even put lines and numbers on
the platform showing which carriage will stop at that point. Just look at your ticket to check your carriage number and stand there and when the doors open jump aboard. Couldn't be simpler. Just be quick you've got 90 seconds to board the bullet train.
The bullet train was another surprise. Smoothest train I've ever ridden on, it
doesn't buck and weave around like an old Sydney train. They even had a hostess bring a
cart around selling food and beer like on an airplane. With fold down tables
to eat at. We sat and drank our beers and watched the scenery passing by at a
rapid rate.
Dave put his strava app on to see how fast the train was traveling. Not as
fast as I thought it would go but faster than any train I've ever been on.
Before we knew it we were disembarking at Utsunomiya station. As we were standing there another bullet train roared through the station frighteningly quick. Amazing I wish we had these in Australia.
Utsunomiya
We decided to walk to our hotel from the station, but in hindsight should have just got a cab. We were beat by the time we got there. Our hotel was the Tobu Hotel Grande Utsunomiya, a 3 star hotel but if that was in Australia it would have been a 4 star hotel.
Internet photo of the Tobu Hotel.
We were due for a meet and greet with Gordon from Pole Position Travels and other guests with welcome beers so we didn't want to miss that. After our meet and greet Gordon suggested we make our way to a Irish bar for something to eat and a few guinnesses. Gordon certainly is an interesting character and loves a beer.
