It was hardly surprising to find, once we’d left the station, it was impossible to tell where Yokohama ended and Tokyo started, and it was just after one o’clock when the train pulled into Tokyo station and we set off in search of The Interpreter.
The Mother’s Mobile made that task much easier than it could have been, though once contact had been made and visual contact established I found myself on the wrong side of a stream of students on a school excursion as ‘Er Indoors threatened to turn a corner and disappear from view.With disaster narrowly averted, we set off to find a lunch venue, eventually settling for pizza before spending about an hour discussing various language-related matters and wordplay in general.
I’d been mildly bemused by the Don’t Touch Doubtful Things signs we’d sighted around Hakone and had amused myself by trying to figure out exactly which of an object’s properties would render it doubtful. Discussion of similar issues with someone whose job involves instantaneous translation of spoken English into spoken Japanese and vice versa was an interesting way to pass the time, particularly when we touched on the matter of a cake shop I’d seen references to on the internet.
It was called, believe it or not, Pumpkin Poo.
By 3:40 we were back on the bullet train bound for Bashō country. A lengthy tunnel took us to Ueno station, where I made my first sighting of the new double-decker shinkansen before we plunged into a tunnel, emerging over the sprawl of Tokyo’s northern suburbs. We’d hardly gone any distance before two overalled females moved through the carriage collecting rubbish, something I found odd since we’d been kept waiting on the platform while the train was cleaned before departure.
Or do travellers bring their rubbish on board with them?
After we’d passed Omiya, a name that seemed familiar from my music collecting activities we encountered farmland once again, though there was still plenty of medium-density housing as well.
And in the middle of one urbanised belt, sighting a Hotel Valentine I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of establishment it might be (particularly after our lunchtime conversation).
There’s every possibility that the establishment in question could attract the majority of its business from the honeymoon trade. Of course, there are a number of other possible explanations, or the name could originate from somewhere right over on the other side of the further reaches of left field.
The blinds on the western side of the train had been drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, and I was glad to have something to look at as we passed patches of forest interspersed with urban areas.
About ten minutes past Utsomiya we were finally in more or less open country stretching away to the eastern horizon as we gradually moved into serious forest in between villages and farm lands. We passed through many lengthy tunnels as the land became hillier and banks of dull grey cloud started to develop overhead.