Week 32 allows Ian and Minako some vacation time

Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Ian & Minako – Tokyo


Hello again, we’re now back in Tokyo after a wonderful short break in Karuizawa to celebrate Minako’s birthday and see the beautiful autumnal scenery.




Karuizawa is only just over an hour away from Tokyo station on the Shinkansen bullet train, it's about 1000 meters above sea level so it is much cooler in the Summer and Autumn arrives here a while before Tokyo.

It is also well known that John Lennon spent his last few summers at Mampei Hotel in Karuizawa with Yoko and Sean.

We popped in just to have a look, it's a grand classic place and we heard there was a wait time of at least 40-50 minutes to sit in the terrace café and enjoy milky tea and apple pie as John used to.


Despite the pandemic and there being no foreign tourists, it was quite crowded with visitors from Tokyo and neighboring areas, especially on the Tuesday, which was a public holiday (Culture Day). Fortunately, there are many quiet areas away from the main tourist spots; we went on a guided wildlife tour around a forested bird sanctuary.





As usual, when we visit a so-called bird sanctuary we saw very few birds. (We have become real bird snobs living in the treasure trove of wild birds in Tokyo!) But our English-speaking guide was fantastic and very informative, telling us about different flora and fauna, for instance bears climbing up cherry trees and perching on the branches munching cherries and how flying squirrels eat pine cones! We hope to join the flying squirrel night tour next time.




Apart from the tour, we visited a few museums and art galleries but what we enjoyed the most was simply walking along the tranquil leafy lanes where the holiday villas are. We enjoyed the blue sky and autumn colors throughout our stay.






Our hotel, Longing House, was excellent, we chose this one mainly because of its vegan-friendly dining and the British themed setting, we had some amazing plant-based breakfasts and dinners (and birthday cake!).

It's an interesting building, although only 40 years old, it's black and white Tudor design is based on the 400-year-old Speke Hall in Liverpool.

We only found out about it when we were dining, it was quite a coincidence and a nice reminder of our English home.






As far as COVID-19 restrictions on our trip are concerned it was a bit mixed. Mostly, people and places were quite strict, the hotel and art museums and tour guides all checked our temperatures and made sure we used the hand sanitizer.  Some places even required guests to leave their contact details, which would be kept for two weeks.

There were a couple of men across the aisle from us on the Shinkansen who made their lunch last the whole journey while they talked loudly, it was quite worrying and annoying, we decided to move seats eventually. Also, a café where we had lunch seemed to have a perverse no-mask policy, no staff wore them nor any of the other customers we saw. We kept ours on as much as possible.


Once we returned to our neighborhood, we've not heard of any corona-related issues, some restaurants are still doing takeaway only and there are far fewer social gatherings but things are mostly normal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 44 - Mixed messages lead to protests in Turkey

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul- Aegean Coast, Turkey  The weather was icy cold last week, when I said I can’t take another day, suddenly that feeling of spring was in the air.   According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first Cemre - imagine a meteor fireball passing by up in the sky, warming the air - fell on Feb 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb 26 and 27 and the last two in March – also will lead to the New Year Nevruz (Nowruz, Iranian).    They say the first Cemre always falls to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth.  Nowadays, because of warmer weather, we are able to have coffee in our garden with our neighbors and have a chat. Otherwise, we were overwhelmed with loneliness.  POLITICAL CRAZINESS  Our ordinary lives can be boring but daily politics is the opposite, there was a controversial event almost every day this week.   This country will make all of us mentally sick. It is ...
Read more

Week 49 - Simon says, 'Count your blessings my fellow Aussies'

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA   Hi everyone, hope all is well wherever you are.  So here we are at the end of March in Western Australia, which means over 12 months of the Pandemic.   Across all of the country, the vaccines are being slowly rolled out but we are not hitting our intended targets.   This seems to be a combination of lack of supply and the doses being given by GP’s rather than at vaccination centers. I guess the only thing that stops this from being a real concern is the size of our case numbers.   The vast majority of our small number of cases is from returned overseas travelers who are put in quarantine anyway.   This week sees a small outbreak in Queensland with some community transmission. This has led to a snap three-day lockdown to try and contain it and perform contact tracing.  Going forward it looks like this will happen fairly frequently. We have demonstrated that these short and sharp lockdowns seem...
Read more

Week 15 - Wednesday in Milan explores the 'new normal' for Ellie

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    “How are y'all doing?” a friend from Texas asked me recently. I am happy to report that the contagion rate in Italy have been mostly down. Daily rates of new infections have been around 150 for the country.    I have the feeling, though, that this is due not only to scared people who mostly stick to their masks and distancing, but of the possibility to do things outdoors, which is what helps with holding new infections down. There are many unwelcome signs for change, though. For example, hope for getting rid of plastics, and its dispersal in the environment, is definitely given up.    Now that all coffee shops, company cafeterias and restaurants that hope to have clients indoors are required to outfit their spaces with distancing partitions, plastic has drastically increased. But it has also started causing some awkward moments.    I met with a friend for a coffee recently, our first get together after...
Read more