Rush hour traffic

On our first day in Tokyo, we woke up at 6:45 in order to give ourselves enough time to meet our bus to Mount Fuji, which left from Hamamatsucho Station at 9 am. After a quick and lovely breakfast at our hostel (there was delicious coffee, with milk to add, as a concession to Western taste buds), we set out, retracing our steps from our arrival, back to Ueno Station. This time, though, we found ourselves actually plastered to each other, and to the walls of the train, once we got on. It was rush hour in Tokyo.

From Ueno Station, we took a Japan Rail line out to Hamamatsucho. Once there, we promptly walked in the wrong direction. This ended up being a stroke of luck, actually, since we had to eventually walk against the flow of pedestrian traffic, and so, got the amazing opportunity to people-watch at high volume. White shirts and dark suits were, almost exclusively, the style for men, while women rocked far more exciting styles. Fortunately, there is a well-ordered sense of where to walk in croweded times like this, and everyone respected the small lane on the right side of the long tunnel out of the station, where pedestrian traffic from the less-traveled direction was herded. (Not only that, but when waiting for the JR line, we joined a two-person-wide line that formed exactly where the doors eventually opened, and that immediately parted as the train stopped, allowing people to get out of the traincar.)

We found our bus 15 minutes before it left, giving us time to carefully examine all of the vending machines set up in the bus terminal. Once aboard, we met our guide for the day, Katsu, and headed out of Tokyo, up to Mount Fuji's fifth station, via the visitor center, where we got a beautiful look at the highest mountain in Japan. We proceeded, on the bus, to the Hakone region, where we first ate a Japanese-style lunch (including miso soup, sashimi, rice and various unidentifiable vegetables and other blocks of a variety of colors and consistency), then boarded a boat on Lake Ashi. We finished that part of the day with a funicular ride, and then boarded a bullet train (shinkansen), which brought us back to Tokyo.

We finished with a walk around Ginza, which reminded me of Rockefeller Center in New York, and stopped for another dinner of udon (this time at a Japanese equivalent of a greasy spoon diner) before calling our first day in Japan quits. Back at the ryokan, we fell asleep immediately, feeling extremely pleased with ourselves.