After having no success at different venues (airport and bicycle shops) for securing a bicycle box, we had to revert to our own resourcefulness. We managed to build a custom bicycle box with some cardboard boxes from a recycling bin and new boxes purchased at the airport. In the end, we felt relieved and proud of our bicycle box. With the tandem disassembled and packaged in our box, we started to focus on our Tokyo visit. Our sightseeing proved to be quite challenging given the high temperature and level of humidity. Our clothes often got soaked in sweat by simply walking to the train stations. Needless to say, we were extremely grateful we had opted to shorten our cycling journey from 10 to 2 days after our Hokkaido visit. Jenny and I were totally dumbfounded to see how Japanese folks did not break a sweat while wearing long sleeve tops and thick jeans. Even when we tried to alternate our sightseeing with visits of air-conditioned shopping malls, we still got soaked in sweat. On most days in Tokyo, the temperature reached 35C which translated to 44C with the humidity. Overall, we spent over 10 weeks (71 days) in different parts of Japan. Tomorrow as we embark on our visit of family in Shanghai, we will likely not post to our blog until our return home.

2024.07.15 – [JP] Narita ==> Narita

As we expected the hotel’s breakfast was quite chaotic but surprisingly the food was well layed out and organized by staff. After breakfast, we opted to visit two bicycle shops in the town of Narita in the hope of securing a bicycle box. We took our hotel’s free airport shuttle to the airport’s terminal 2 where we took a city bus to the Aeon Shopping mall. We were deeply disappointed by our 2 bicycle shop’s visit. The best outcome we got was to salvage some broken and partially wet boxes from one of the bicycle shop’s recycling bin. We took the first scheduled bus back (12:30pm) to terminal 2 where we decided to purchase 4 of the largest boxes available at the packing counter. We returned to our hotel with all those box parts by using their free airport shuttle. In the early afternoon, we spent 2 hours building our own custom bicycle box and then spent another 1.5 hours disassembling and packaging the tandem into the box. Towards the end of the tandem disassembling, I unfortunately strained my back. By the end, we were quite relieved and in the meantime proud of our creative box customization. All of the tandem parts and accessories were snugly stored in the box. We left the bicycle box with the hotel reception for safe keeping until our return on July 22nd for our flight to Shanghai. In the evening, we visited a restaurant from a nearby hotel but we felt it was too expensive. We continued our walk to the airport’s terminal 3 where we had dinner from different food court restaurants.

2024.07.16 – [JP] Narita ==> Narita

With a big relief from the boxing of the tandem behind us, today we focused on returning to the Aeon shopping mall for some leisure shopping. Hence after our hotel’s breakfast, we repeated our commute from the previous day. As my back injury from yesterday was still uncomfortable, I waited for Jenny at Starbucks while she perused the shopping mall. After a few hours of shopping, she purchased a few clothes items. Before leaving the shopping mall, we purchased some food staples for our dinner. We took the 3:05pm bus back to terminal 2 and then the free airport shuttle back to our hotel. After dinner in our room, we re-arranged our luggage in order to leave a duffel bag of equipment and a bicycle trunk in storage with the hotel reception.

2024.07.17 – [JP] Narita ==> Tokyo

During the night, Jenny woke me up telling me the building was shaking as we had obviously experienced a small earthquake – something the local folks probably didn’t even bother with. The breakfast room in the past two days had fewer people showing up but it was still somewhat chaotic. We had to recover our duffel bag from the hotel reception as we had to take a few items out and leave our water bottles behind. Thankfully we used a luggage cart to move our duffel bag as my back was still hurting. We took the hotel’s free airport shuttle to terminal 2. Unfortunately, we got confused between train options and we ended up boarding a fast train dubbed the SkyLine as opposed to the SkyConnect which would only cost the half of the price. Upon arriving in Tokyo to the closest train station to our hotel, we had a grueling 12 minutes walk to our hotel under 35C. As we arrived to our hotel at 1:00pm, we left our luggage and walked back to the Akihabara neighborhood. We opted to visit a couple of camera stores and manga/anime stores. Jenny purchased a few gift items (tax free) for our upcoming China visit. Back at the hotel, we checked into our room and rested until the early evening. Later, we took the city bus to the Asakusa neighborhood where we had dinner at a local fast food and then visited the Sensō-ji temple. We appreciated our travel guide’s suggestion to visit the site in the evening in order to avoid the large crowd of visitors. After our visit, we took the city bus back to our hotel. Jenny managed to do some clothes wash by hand. We walked over 12km throughout the day.

2024.07.18 – [JP] Tokyo ==> Tokyo

Our first hotel breakfast in Tokyo was also well attended by guests. As we left our hotel for some sightseeing, we could already feel the heat of the day ahead. We walked over to the Akihabara neighborhood to reach our required train station but along the way we opted to visit an electronic store (Bic Camera) to checkout the gaming devices. After almost an hour of comparing products, we left the store with a Ninento Switch for Victoria. Unfortunately, Jenny had to carry the box in our day pack for the remainder of our sightseeing and shopping day. After completing a 3km self-guided walk in the Yanesen neighborhood, we were drenched in sweat. We decided to skip our visit of the Imperial Palace in lieu of finding an air conditioned venue for some relief of the heat and humidity. Hence, we took a train to the Ginza neighborhood where Jenny spent a few hours shopping at a Uniqlo’s flagship store while I enjoyed a bad coffee on their top floor cafe. Jenny was quite pleased with all the clothes gifts for China she picked up at the store. We had a quick lunch at McDonald’s – the most affordable eating place in this neighborhood. We visited yet another used camera store with the hope of finding a newer version of our own Sony RX100 camera. Sadly the shelves offered no options. We took another train to reach our hotel area. We were both tired from our 12kms walk in the heat. After a well deserved rest, we had dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Jenny again kindly did some clothes wash by hand.

2024.07.19 – [JP] Tokyo ==> Tokyo

After our hotel’s breakfast, we ventured out for more sightseeing. As much as we enjoyed our hotel, we realized that its location was not ideal in terms of closeness to train stations – each of our train commute required basically a 10 minutes walk prior to reaching one of several train stations in the area. We took the train to visit the Hamarikyu Gardens. After exiting the train station, we struggled for more than 15 minutes in the large underground plaza/walkways to find the proper exit to lead us to the gardens. We spent one hour or so exploring the gardens. We felt the gardens would likely be much more colorful during the flower blooming season. Later, we walked a fair distance to a bus stop to catch a ride to our next sightseeing attraction: teamLab Borderless – dubbed a virtual art museum. After spending an hour exploring the various museum rooms, we took a short break and ate some snacks from an expensive food market in the underground mall near the museum. As we had skipped our visit of the Imperial Palace yesterday, we thought we should try to drop by for a short visit. After a short train ride and another sweltering walk, we managed to take a few pictures of the bridges leading to Japan’s Emperor Palace. We considered briefly visiting the Imperial Palace East Garden but the extra walking distance discouraged us. Instead, we decided to take the train from closest station back to our hotel. Again, we struggled briefly to find our particular train within the very large and chaotic Tokyo train station. Back at the hotel, we showered and rested until the early evening. For dinner, we returned to the same restaurant as yesterday as our neighborhood offered very few restaurant options. We covered 14kms over the day.

2024.07.20 – [JP] Tokyo ==> Tokyo

Jenny had a very tough night as she ended up emptying her stomach in our room’s sink. And to add to the eventful night, the drain got clogged and overflowed onto the bathroom floor. Jenny reached out to the reception for assistance. The night-time hotel reception agent kindly came over to our room and offered us access to the bathroom from another room nearby. Jenny felt a bit better by morning time but she clearly opted to skip the hotel’s breakfast. I showed up for breakfast by myself and later inquired about our bathroom cleanup promised by the night-time reception agent. Shortly after 10:00am, a couple of cleaning/building maintenance staff showed up to clean and fix our bathroom drainage. We stepped out of the room and took the opportunity to review and select our photos in the hotel’s lounge area. By 11:00am, our bathroom and room had been fully restored to their pristine state. We had purposely decided to leave our room late this morning in order to have dinner in the Shinjuku neighborhood that we would be visiting. After a train ride to the Shinjuku station, we visited a few camera stores. Sadly, none of them offered much selection in the used Sony RX100 model line. Later, we visited the 45th floor observatory from the north tower of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. We rested and cooled down there for over 30 mins. As we checked our weather app, the temperature was reported at 35C but said it felt like 44C. And surprisingly, the app indicated the temperature was cooler than yesterday – this could explain why we felt more tired yesterday. Along our walk, we stopped at a coffee shop for a light snack and an ice coffee. On our agenda today, over and above some sightseeing, we needed to buy an inexpensive carry-on bag to accommodate all the gifts and extra clothes that we bought along the way. Our research suggested that we could find a good selection of bags at a Don Quijote outlet – a very popular discount store chain. We spent over an hour in the store to tackle various purchases including a compact 35 liter nylon bag that would serve us well as a carry-on. Throughout our stay in Japan, we noticed that the “tax-free” shopping was extremely popular with all the foreign visitors and especially folks from mainland China. Finally, we wrapped up our visit of the lively Shinjuku neighborhood by having an early evening meal at a Ramen restaurant in order to ease Jenny’s stomach back to normal. We still did not know what caused Jenny’s illness as we essentially had the same food throughout the previous day. We walked 11kms during our day.

2024.07.21 – [JP] Tokyo ==> Tokyo

After our hotel breakfast, we took the train towards the Shibuya neighborhood. We started our sightseeing visit with the Meiji Jingu shrine. As we emerged onto the streets of Shibuya, we realized that the Sunday crowd were all out everywhere. We struggled with the heat/humidity making our way through the flow of people. We finally took a rest at a Meju store cafe. We kept on shopping as much as we could but by 5:00pm we were exhausted and ready for an early dinner. We stopped at a local Gusto restaurant outlet for dinner. After dinner, the street crowds were a bit more sparse but the heat and humidity persisted. We took a train back towards our hotel for a good night rest. We walked around 12kms.

2024.07.22 – [JP] Tokyo ==> Narita

After our last hotel breakfast in Tokyo, we opted to skip the last minor sightseeing we had planned in lieu of visiting a large shopping mall. We took the train to the Tokyo Solamachi shopping mall just beside the Tokyo Skytree tower. After a couple of hours there, we managed to purchase a pair of shoes each. Back at the hotel, we picked up our luggage and proceeded back to the train station. We boarded a train that we thought would bring us to the Narita airport but half way on our journey we realized we were on a local train and hence was not bound for the airport. We had to wait 40 minutes at a train station for the actual express train to the Narita airport. After our arrival at the airport T2-3 terminal station, we purchased some packing tape and proceeded to take our free airport shuttle to our Toyoko Inn hotel for the night. We arrived at our hotel shortly after 4:00pm and managed to use our accumulated hotel credits to secure our room for only $16 cdn. We checked out our duffel bag and bicycle trunk that we had left in storage at the hotel. Later we purchased some well needed snacks at the lobby’s convenience store. Once in our room I crafted some packing handles inserts to be attached to our bicycle box in order to facilitate its handling by airport baggage staff. In the evening, we took the hotel free airport shuttle to the airport Terminal 2 to have our dinner. Before leaving the airport terminal, we tried to get a refund for the deposit and unused balance from our ICOCA transit cards. Sadly we were told we would need to get this done in Osaka as we had bought our cards there. Back at the hotel, we tapped our packing inserts onto our bicycle box to ensure we were ready for our flight to Shanghai tomorrow. We still managed to cover another 11kms during our walks.