We had arranged to meet up with some of Kiyomi’s friends and have lunch together in Tokyo. Sounds easy. Well the meeting part was. I have come to the conclusion that finding a place to have lunch (when you haven’t decided in advance in Tokyo) involves walking around to various restaurants and seeing which on has the shortest line, hoping it has nice food and joining it.

Several lines later we managed to sit down, feed our faces and generally catch up.

Later on in the afternoon we had to catch the Shinkansen. We collected our bags from the coin lockers in Tokyo Station and made our way to the Shinkansen tracks.

I did notice a few signs near the entrance to the Shinkansen tracks saying something along the lines that the Japanese police are on “High Alert”. Walking through the turnstile there was a life size model of a Japanese policeman standing on a makeshift stool… upon closer inspection it was a real policeman (he blinked, once, I think. He was just standing there like a statue watching people pass through the gates. He was decked out in full riot gear, helmet with visor, the works. Sooo serious it was funny in it’s own way.

I really wanted to take a picture, but since there were signs warning passengers that they were on “high alert” we may have been mistaken for terrorists and taken away!

— David

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