no charge

First thing we did yesterday was go into a huge photo store, to try to buy a recharger for my camera, whose battery has expired.  No luck (ancient three-year-old camera).  And of course the new batteries come "empty," with instructions to first recharge them.  (I may have left the recharger in Portales.)

Then we went on a bus tour of the city, which started with a 45-storey elevator ride to Seaside Top to look down on  mostly modern Tokyo, since the Americans, including James Dickey, did some drastic urban renewal in 1945. 

Then we walked around the Emperor's Palace grounds (which the Americans tried to miss), about an hour's circumnavigation.  Think I'll go back for a watercolor.  Some beautiful shapes and textures.

Of course we took an hour to invade the Asakusa shopping district, which was bad timing, since about a million people were on holiday and had the same idea.  It was crushingly crowded, but kind of fun.   We inched our way down to the temple, but only paused long enough to sniff some incense and buy some cake, and then crawled in reverse back to a cross street, where we were ejected into a merely busy traffic stream.  After a few blocks we spotted our tour guide, who was holding aloft a fluffy pink duck.

She escorted us onto a river boat, where we were treated to a 45-minute cruise down the central waterway.  Good scenery and of course a welcome break, sitting in the breeze with a cool beer.  We went under nineteen bridges.

The tour ended in an area new to us, near the train station.  We started walking, looking for a dinner place, but almost every restaurant was closed for the holiday.  Finally we ducked into a small sort-of-Italian place, the Boo, which was delightful.  Crunchy fried whole shrimp.  (Fortunately, I'd had them at a Japanese place in San Francisco, so I could just chomp down bravely.) And pizza.

Gay figured out the subway system well enough to get us across town and within a few blocks of our hotel.  We collapsed exhausted.

Joe