We had one day in Tokyo on this trip in order to recover between the northern and central legs of our trip. My aim for this day was to meet a new friend and to see plum blossom. We had a slow morning, which was the first for our trip, and met my lovely friend at Tokyo station. We had an absolute blast of a day and spent the whole day together. To find plum blossom we headed to Ueno, and walked there through the chilly, rainy weather (the complete opposite of the weather yesterday).

Our destination was Yushima Tenjin Shrine, I thought I had seen it all when it came to Tokyo shrines, but this was a real surprise. The shrine is situated on a hill which is absolutely covered in plum trees. Sadly, we were a little early for the plums in full bloom, and the cold, wet weather hadn’t helped the bloom progress. It was still lovely to walk around the shrine, and the one benefit of the weather was that this usually popular shrine was rather empty.

Chilly and wet we started to head back towards Tokyo station and stopped in a Denny’s to try off and chat for a while, before continuing our journey on. My lovely friend had been searching for places I was able to eat at, with all of my allergies, and discovered Amakarachaya near Tokyo station. We felt a little out of place in our soggy jeans and raincoats and the clientele was rather well dressed. The staff were lovely and sat us in the restaurant and we got some green tea on the house, and ordered wagashi: warabi mochi and anmitsu. The warabi mochi was fresh and warm, and the kinako had a delicious nutty flavour. I wasn’t such a fan of the anmitsu due to the variety of textures in the dish, but my husband enjoyed it.

Good company and good food made a dreary day really enjoyable, after a sad goodbye to my friend, we go Coco Curry for dinner, and an early night before our two week road-trip begins!