Ueno (Yamanote) Harajuku

Parcly: More miserable rain was falling when we finished touring the station, which made me hungry. Before departing for Harajuku I had a beef croquette (from a food stand in an outdoor concert area in Ueno Park) and onigiri and iced coffee (from a convenience store in JR’s Ueno Station).

Spindle: If cosplayers come out in clear weather, then it must be that umbrellas come out in the rain as we discovered on Takeshita Street (竹下通り), crammed with tiny shops and ponies to the brim – the umbrellas, when seen from the elevated entrance, left nopony exposed. Because of the high number of younger visitors, vendors may send prototypes of their products here for testing and feedback in a so-called “antenna shop”. Having eaten small snacks, our proper lunch came at the Lotteria near Takeshita’s other endpoint.

Harajuku (Yamanote) Ikebukuro (Saikyō 埼京) Akabane 赤羽

Spindle: Regarding English translations of Japanese place names, many sources give redundant translations, e.g. “Takeshita-dori Street” when -dori (通り) means street. This redundancy aids the casual tourist, but becomes a little annoying for more seasoned ones like the two of us (we’ve also been to Hokkaido, Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto, Takayama, etc. – but never to Shikoku or Kyushu, oddly enough).

Parcly: The sole purpose of us going to Akabane was to deliver some of my gifts to a waiting Cinnabar for return to the Crystal Empire by Hearth’s Warming. Heavy construction was going on within the station, an operation on a beating heart. I find it amazing that such works can proceed without noticeable disruption to commuter traffic, at multiple places simultaneously, in a country noted for its extreme punctuality. It testifies to the determination of the Japanese population, that once they start they never really abandon.

Akabane (Keihin-Tōhoku 京浜東北) Tokyo Main (Tōzai) Nishi-kasai

Spindle: Parcly needed a standard ticket for the last part of her trip back to her accommodation from Akabane, since her subway pass had “long” expired. In Japan, things move really fast: one day ago may already be consigned to history, one day forward does not exist in the popular imagination. It may explain why Lotteria is quite rare in Japan and more popular in South Korea, since the latter country’s train networks are not as developed as the former.

Parcly: Coffee couldn’t prepare me for the storm… the storm of rush-hour traffic through Tokyo Main and on the Tōzai Line when rubbing with other ponies was inevitable. Seven hours of walking off the ends of the metropolis gave me sore hooves and a weary horn, and I couldn’t retreat into my bottle under a collective flow of thousands of little ponies with thousands of destinations. Some pain lingered after I dropped myself on the sofa.

For dinner I just took out a choose-your-own bento and fried oysters. There is an old saying that you’re done exploring something when you grok it, when the romantic novelty degrades into familiarity. That threshold had certainly passed for me, so I was now longing for Canterlot again. I resolved to return thus by Hearth’s Warming itself.