Rainy Nikko and Breezy Tokyo

Well, the weather did not cooperate. The early morning was absolutely beautiful. Sumi and I got up to run at dawn (around 4:30). We had exactly two choices of where to run: left or right. We were on the only road for miles. So, since we had different amounts of running to do, she went left and I went right. The result was, one of us ran through the nice little town of Kanuma and one of us had a scenic run to a temple. The one with the iPhone (Sumi) did more walking and picture taking than running.

A view of the hostel from the road

A view of the Kurogawa from the same spot

The area is known for logging, and there are many long stretches of road lined with pine trees.

The rain held off, though we were about as wet as if it had rained on us. It has been 100% humidity since we landed in Japan. We were back, had taken our showers,

The promised photo of the "showers"

 and were relaxing in the outdoor lounge by 6:30. It was really a great way to start the morning, looking out at the river, catching up on e-mail, frantically doing work (Sumi). That lasted for about 15 minutes. Then the rain came. And didn't stop.

Scout came out with breakfast (pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and yogurt) at about 8:00, and by 9:30 we were all loaded into the bus heading to the station. We'll have to make Nikko a destination on a later trip, but the temples aren't worth getting soaked over.

The two hour trip back to Ueno was as smooth and easy as could be, and we found ourselves in town with three hours to kill before we could check back into our hotel. A friend of mine (Jon) has a rather unhealthy obsession with Super Sentai figurines (think Power Rangers or Ultraman) and had asked if we could get some from the capsule machines in Akiba. Well, we didn't see anything that, er, cool in the capsules, but found a large cache of them in Hobby Off earlier in the week. I had sent him pictures, he sent back annotated pictures with the desired toys, er, collectibles from the images. So today we went to pick them up, if they were still there.

So, dropping most of our luggage off at a coin locker in Ueno, we headed down to Akiba. As soon as we got to Hobby Off, I realized that while the original photos were in Sumi's phone, the annotated ones were in Facebook, and we didn't have Internet access. Now, Japan has been just awful when it comes to free wifi in stations, restaurants, etc. The business model has been to give wifi access to those with mobile phone accounts to minimize cell data usage, so there are a ton of proprietary wifi networks at all major centers of Tokyo. This leaves foreign travelers out in the cold, so to speak. Well, NTT, Japan's largest ISP, has finally started offering a free 14 day Internet subscription to any visiting foreigner. Sumi had gotten the information a while ago and we decided to give it a shot. There was only one problem. It only works in specific places, which can be found, you guessed it, online.

So, intrepid internet hunters that we are, we began scouring Akiba for the free NTT network. And after about 40 minutes, and some moments of weakness that sidetracked one of us,

we gave up and headed towards a Starbucks, where Sumi has an account for internet. As luck would have it, approaching the Starbucks, we suddenly FOUND the free NTT network. Where it was coming from, we don't know, but it was right outside the Tokyo Anime Center Official Shop. What makes it official, I don't know, but it was certainly an anime shop.

So, we got online, I got the annotated pics and by this time it had been five hours since breakfast and we were hungry. Luckily, there was a nearby Coco Curry House Ichibanya! A place where you can get Japanese curry custom made for you. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but vegetables are hard to come by unless you go to nice restaurants, which are quite expensive. At Coco Curry, vegetable curry is $7, or a topping on another curry for an extra $2. Oh, and it's absolutely yummy!

I love the faces next to the spiciness and mildness charts.

Now them's vegetables!

I think she likes it

After lunch, we finally headed to Hobby Off, where Sumi dove into the baskets of trinkets while I searched for Jon's sentai figurines. We ended up with more Hello Kitty and Cardcaptor Sakura stuff than anything else. I did break down and pick up that old Japanese Monopoly set (when am I ever going to see that again?) and found what I think were the five figures that Jon asked for. We'll see. They had cleaned up the area and what was a disorganized mess of toys was now an organized mess of toys, so things were not in the same place as they were the other day.

By now, it was almost time to check in, so we packed up, headed back to Ueno to get our luggage from the locker and then on to Asakusa and our hotel. We were a little early, so we headed up to the roof to relax a bit before we could get in.

Sumi getting more work done 

Not a very scenic view from the roof, but an oddly pleasant urban jungle vibe

Once we got into our room, it was time for the mundane chores of laundry and organizing our stuff in preparation for next week. Sumi found a coin laundry just a few blocks away, attached to a sentou (public bath). If we wouldn't have had a map, we'd have never found it, as it was located at the corner of two alleys with no sign, a tiny room with four washers and four dryers. About two hours later, after a stop at Don Quixote to stock up on food for breakfasts and stuff, we were back in our room and ready to call it a day. At the very late hour of 5:45pm...

Tomorrow, we make our annual pilgrimage to Ikebukuro and Sunshine City. And, if the weather isn't miserable, we may even check out some of the parks in the area we've never been to, such as Yoyogi.

One last thing. The hostel we are staying at in Asakusa has a page of advice for their guests:

#3 "Please put your shoes on when you leave your room for your safety." Because apparently you are in danger of a cat tickling your foot if you don't?