See day 71 below to skip to the information about the Sky Tree and subway.

Travel Log: Day 70 (9/5), Tokyo Japan

For field trip Friday we were planning on going to the Sumo museum for the social studies portion of our day. It rained the entire day, and hard most of the time, so we decided we would do that another day.

Because of the rain we also ate strictly Lawson today. My step count is seriously low at about 1300 steps.

For FAC JC and I had drinks in the foyer (if you can call it that) and listened to music.

BC picked The Wild Robot which was a welcome changeup from the same old movies they usually pick.

Travel Log: Day 71 (9/6), Tokyo Japan

JC and I ran together for the first time since I tweaked my back a few weeks ago. The run went great, mainly because my mindset was that I was just so happy to be running, and getting in some vigorous exercise. Yoga doesn’t do the same thing for me. We might try running a couple times a week since it’s the only form of intense exercise available to us. The trick with that will be finding a way to avoid injury. After getting smoked by all of the Japanese during our first mile, we then seemed like we were passing everyone.

We picked up another Amazon package today which had BC’s video game recording card among other things. We let him work on that for quite a while and he got it mostly working.

In the afternoon we walked to the Tokyo Sky Tree. It’s much more impressive up close where you can see the staggering height. Underneath it are a couple train stations and three floors of retail/dining. We walked around the dining floor until we realized we wouldn’t get a seat anywhere. Instead we went to the ground level where there was a quieter cafe. BC and AC got shrimp sandwiches that they both agreed were gross. AC choked it all down and BC made a good effort. Even in this setting, when throwing our wrappers and stuff away we had to sort it out into paper, plastic, and metals. I can’t help but wonder if people are really that diligent about the separation of trash.

After running and the long walk to the Sky Tree, it seemed like a good time to try out the subway to get closer to home. We struggled with this; it was a different world than the JR system. We followed this pink path under the Sky Tree which seemed to lead exactly to the line we needed. However, when we got there I noticed all these signs saying “NOT the subway”. We paused due to that, looking lost, and some nice Japanese men asked us if we needed help. We said yes and showed them our route on google maps. They knew the station we needed and pointed us in the right direction, which was a different station entirely.

Once we got there the map called for a specific gate. While we didn’t find that gate, we followed the “A” line signs. We ended up on the right platform but we were still unsure if it was right. We boarded one train, then bailed off of it real quick when we realized it was not the “A” line at all. Then we found the right train but hesitated too long and the doors closed as we tried to enter. The next train was just a few minutes later and we boarded it and made it to our destination. Part of the confusion is that one train bound for a particular destination is not the same as a train a few minutes later bound for the same destination.

I’m gathering you need to have several pieces of information to know a train is the correct one. You need to know the station of course, but also the platform number. Then you need to know the name of the line AND the destination of the line AND the time of the line’s departure from the station. If all of that lines up, you’ve got the right train. You can additionally verify you’re on the right train by the stop it is reportedly at as you board. In our case today it was A20, and we needed to ride five stops to A15. The first train we bailed off of, we knew it was wrong because it was reporting something like KK15.

We’ll get this stuff down eventually.