Japan in Autumn: Day 13 Nov 12

Much to John’s delight, breakfast this morning consisted of bread and jam and tea.

We said our farewells to the very hospitable hotel staff and took the taxi to the station. We could see some light objects fluttering from the sky. They looked like cherry blossoms falling, but we realised that they were snowflakes. We could see that the tops of the surrounding mountains were covered in snow.

Snow on the mountains

No wonder it's cold!

Erin looked a lot better, but has been quite weakened by her sickness, so we’ll be slowing the pace for a while. She was able to nap on the trains back to Shinjuku. We passed through some lovely scenery, with small villages and towns and rice paddies with a gorgeous mountain backdrop and sunny sky.

Bicycles near a railway station

Once we made our way back to the Toyoko Inn in Shinjuku, we were able to plead our case for a very early check in for Erin to go to bed.

We had booked a session to make glass wind chimes this afternoon, but Erin is obviously not going to be well enough to trek over to the other side of the city to do this, so I had the amazing experience of making my first phone call entirely in Japanese. Much to my delight, the woman at the other end understood what I was telling her and said that it was fine to cancel. This was a great boost to my confidence! Although Erin was disappointed in missing the glass-blowing and painting experience, we're going to look for some kind of craft activity once we get back to Osaka.

Once Erin was settled and sleeping, we went out for some shopping for a little while. We took back some plain rice balls for Erin as she’s ready to face food again.

Cool motorbike near the baseball batting practice centre

We took our goodies back to the hotel and checked on Erin who is now doing fine, but will be a bit slow-moving for a while. She said that she’d like to rest for a bit longer, but go out later, so John and I went out and booked the shinkansen tickets for tomorrow and then for dinner at a nice little noodle restaurant (with smokers at the next table –yuck!) followed by another browse in the shops.

Back at the hotel, Erin felt ready to take on some shopping. I walked back up to the shopping area to walk off my noodles, but John took Erin in a taxi so she still had some energy left to walk around the shops. We visited a number of shops, but particularly enjoyed the 100 yen shops which gave us a few laughs as well as the chance to buy a few quirky little things to remind us of our trip.