A very pleasant day was spent re-acquainting ourselves with Tokyo. We made straight for the coffee shop to get the tramping molecules charged and then it was off to Ueno JR station to exchange our rail ticket vouchers for the JR passes. Two delightful and very helpful young women tended to our desires so that we were now in possession of our JR passes and booked shinkansen tickets for the journeys to and from Kyoto.
Time to plunder the local markets in Ueno ... if buying a couple of trinkets is classed as plunder, which I doubt. A plate of tempura and cold noodles followed, which revived us from such strenuous activity and we were able to travel on the metro to Tokyo central. We congratulated ourselves on not getting lost in the stations labyrinthine bowels and found our way outside to marvel at the old station building restoration project currently in progress - it will look stunning when it's finished.
A brisk march around the local area was followed by a metro back to Ueno where were sought out a refreshing coffee. The coffee shop is just across the street from a huge electronics store which gave me the excuse to check out the iPad 2 - no usb port; no good to me then ...
Back at the ranch for a wee rest and then it was time to visit the supermarket. On the way to Temple Nosh we were side tracked by a visit to two temples.
Higashi-Honganji is a small temple almost next to the hotel - hence the hotel's name. Just down the road from Higashi-Honganji there is another temple which was first built in ca. 1250 - I couldn't get the name of the place because a monk was shutting the main gate for the evening ... tomorrow I'll ...
Temple Nosh provided an abundance of scoffables - we're going to have ginger chicken with stir-fried veggies and noodles. Afters will be some sort of bready, cinnamon thing which looks delicious. "Is the stuff radioactive ?" I hear you ask. Who cares ...