IPP42 (Part 1)

[Dear reader - please excuse the hiatus - I've been off enjoying myself - normal service may resume.] 

We start travelling down to London the night before our flight and meet Chris & Ken for dinner at a sublime Italian near Chris’ place where we’re crashing for the night. The rude early alarm gets us off in the direction of Heathrow where we ditch the bags and grab some brekkie in the terminal. We get onboard at about the right time but find ourselves delayed quite a bit firstly due to a weight and balance issue and then due to traffic restrictions over Germany, which is weird because last time we flew over the pole and didn’t go anywhere near Germany… this time the flight takes us east and lasts several hours longer… long enough to watch a couple of movies and start a new book - don’t judge me, it’s the new Dan Brown - escapist holiday reading!

We land at Haneda, grab our baggage and find a taxi in what feels like seconds. Our driver checks out the traffic and points us in the right direction and about half an hour later we’re at the hotel and asking (pretty please) if we can check in, but it’s only 9:30 and check-in only opens at 2pm… we ditch the bags and head off to Shinjuku to the mother of all fabric and fibre stores- Okadaya. Navigating the metro is fairly straight forward with Gill acting as the spotter-in-chief and we get to Shinjuku quite easily. We decide we need some sustenance and head in search of a coffee shop - totally confused by Google maps where the coffee shop appears to be on the other side of the road irrespective of which side of the road we’re on… then it tells us we’re approaching and there’s no coffee shop in sight- we try to find the building name (Subnade?) and fail, until Gill spots a subway entrance with the name Subnade over it… we head down into the subway and find the coffee shop right where it should be - we feast on pancakes to rebuild our strength so we can go shopping for fabric and goodies…

Okadaya has moved buildings since the last time we were there and we do the grand tour from the top floor downwards with Gill finding some new Snoopy / Liberty fabric she’s been after as soon as we walk in… we wander down to Tokyu Hands and repeat the tour from the top down, not buying anything here… we’re about in time for the hotel check-in to be opening so we head back to the hotel and check in…

We sleep for a couple of hours (we are knackered!) and then meet Tim & Carol for dinner where we chance across a little Chinese joint down a dark alley behind the station… great grub and we make a mental note that another visit may well be indicated…

We drop into the 7Eleven at the hotel for the obligatory IPP room snacks and drinks and then lurk in the hotel lobby where we find Brian and Sue and catch up on things. When Stefan and Beni arrived there are introductions all round - they’d found a great ramen joint off Tabelog - we made plans to meet at breakfast the next morning and then crashed.

Breakfast was a massive spread and we had fun chatting with Mr & Mrs Puzzle again. They decided they needed to do some laundry (they’d been traveling around Japan for a while already) so we headed off to Asakusa for some sightseeing - walking around the street-food stalls and the Senso-ji temple grounds. We pick a coffee shop for lunch and I really enjoy a pair of pancakes while Gill has a well-stuffed sandwich. At some point while we’re wandering back there’s a post from the Puzzles showing they’d just been to see Meiko at Torito - so much for their laundry - clearly a coded message that I missed out on! (I immediately being planning a laundry trip of my own…)

The walk back to the hotel is absolutely baking hot and we end up wilting from the heat and getting a couple of hours kip before finding Brian and Sue and heading back to the same Chinese restaurant for dinner again… while we’re there Nick pops up on messenger and says he’s at the hotel so I send him a pin and we carry on with dinner - a suitable time later we’ve eaten way more than we should so we get the bill and just after we’ve settled up Nick arrives and there’s a round of greetings and we catch up on the walk back to the hotel in the gentle rain - it’s still really warm in spite of the rain.

There’s a chunk of chatting in the lobby before we head off for the night.

Monday is Gill’s birthday and after breakfast with the usual crowd we wander up the river to Asakusa for a washi paper-making workshop with Nick, Anne, Frank and Jo. Kazu teaches us the basics of paper-making and then walks us each through all the steps of making our own set of coloured postcards. Everyone gets in on the action and there is plenty of vigorous mixing of the fibres and mucus followed by rhythmic shaking of said-fibres into trays before the ritual squeezing of the wet papers with the help of a handy car jack. We did some casual shopping in the gift shop while our papers dried then their eventual unveiling to a round of Hess-inspired oohing and aahing - we missed Dick.

From there we found a traditional lunch spot in Asakusa-proper where Jo treated us to a lovely lunch… slow walk back to the hotel along the river bank where the temperature was pleasantly a little cooler than the day before.

We meet the gang, including the Youngs who’ve returned from their sewer tour, in the lobby and head downtown for a dinner cruise. The taxis get us there in good time, but there’s a call from our concerned host ten minutes before the appointed meeting time because we aren’t there yet - gotta love this place! She sounds relieved when I tell her we’re 5 minutes away… we arrive in good time and check in and I sign everyone’s lives away, at least that’s what I think I’m signing…

Onboard we each have our own little stove and a wok full of dinner and set about cooking our own as we wend our way up river toward the Odaiba basin, complete with a view of the cutest stature of liberty in the world (it doesn’t like to be called to smallest one!) - there are plenty of photos and a rousing round of happy birthday (and presents for Gill, and even one for me from Brian and Sue) before we head back to our drop-off point serenaded by our musicians and a memorable round of “Yoi! Yoi!” - cabs back to the hotel and then a walk down to the main drag for some ice creams where we find something gluten-free for Brian, only for him to find it isn’t right at the end. He’s OK in the morning so we didn’t damage Mr Puzzle!