Published: 2025-05-10
Day 2 was our first foray into genuinely touristy things when Michelle took us to Meiji Jingu, a Shinto-Buddhist shrine/temple that is surrounded by a man-made forest in the heart of the Tokyo area.
It was absolutely breathtaking and the forest was impeccably designed to look like it was natural - finished in the 1920s it looks like it had always been there. It’s wild to think that the Yamanote train line was essentially right beside the shrine - it was extremely peaceful.
After visiting the shrine, we headed down to Ochanomizu to see where Michelle spends a few days a week volunteering at a Christian radio/TV station. We got a great tour of the studio, met some of her colleagues, and then headed down the street to get our first taste of authentic Japanese ramen. Holy. Smokes. That was all I needed for food for the rest of the day 🍜
After lunch we made our way to Besties Cafe, which is run by one of Michelle’s closest friends in Tokyo. We spent a few hours there, chatting with her incredible friend Yocchi with Michelle acting as an amazing translator. The coffee was so good, and if it wasn’t for that pesky diabetes I would have indulged in one of their lemon tarts!
We had plans to do some other things that evening, but unfortunately Heather’s newly-acquired cough started to turn a bit more serious so we turned in for the day a bit earlier than expected.
Day 3 is a down day since Heather is very much under the weather unfortunately, but it’s also a rainy, drizzly day. Our original plans had been to meet up with Michelle’s friend Kari down in Endoshima but we’ll be putting that off until tomorrow at the earliest. We’ll be puttering around near Michelle’s place in Higashi-Nurume and making sure Heather’s got what she needs to start feeling better. There was a Typhoid Mary candidate on our Skyliner train from Narita into the city so it’s unfortunately not too surprising that one of us got sick 👎
Also, I’m a bit of a doorknob and forgot my SLR when we left the hotel yesterday, but hopefully I’ll actually remember the “real camera” when we head down toward Kyoto and Hiroshima next week 🙃
