The first part of my day involved moving lodgings yet again. I had the Shinkoiwa apartment booked for 3 nights, which had just ended, and next up was a hotel booking in the depths of Akasaka (not to be confused with Asakusa, even though I always type the latter when I mean the former) for 5 nights, which would take me all the way until the end of the (first) Tokyo leg of my trip, as my 21-day JR pass would then kick in for the last 21 days of my trip. And at this point, I’d want to use the pass as much as possible to travel around the country and see things, so I wanted some stability to try to catch up on things (blogging, work, and the travel diary which I have been neglecting, as well as some rest) before I set off on my odyssey. Therefore, a 5-night stay at reasonable rates in an interesting-looking neighbourhood seemed like a good idea.

I checked out right at the 10:00 am deadline from my apartment, never having met my landlord even once (since this was the type of booking where they owned the whole building and sublet rooms out to people, and not the type where I was living in a guestroom in their house or behind their tavern). I took a few more pictures of the Shinkoiwa area as I left it for the last time, like this, kindergarten kids having fun in their walled garden:

And this, a leaflet explaining neighbourhood garbage collection days:

And this, a bad pun by a bookstore I walked by (木曜日 is Thursday with 曜日 being the -day part of the word, は is “is”, 本 is book, so them changing the 木 to a 本 with the line pretty much means “Thursday is book day” in a punny way):

A line of kindergarten kids walking by wearing the same funny Halloween shirt:

Kawaii!

I took the JR Sobu Line rapid train from Shinkoiwa Station to Tokyo Station:

And then transferred from there to the Marunouchi Line, which got me to the nearest station to the hotel, Akasaka-Mitsuke Station. This is also the line that gets me to Yotsuya Station, the nearest station to Sophia University, where I tried to go to the last two years (see previous blog entries) and hope to next year as well now that COVID fears are receding.

The Akasaka neighbourhood I was in was interesting, since from the main road that the station was next to, the scenery looks very commercial, with wide roads and tall buildings. And especially around lunch and in the evenings, there were tons of smartly-dressed businessmen (or salarymen, as the Japanese call them) roaming the streets.

Move one or two roads over though, and the tall buildings completely give way to short buildings with various shops and amenities clumped together, everything from restaurants to convenience stores to pawn shops to izakayas to lounges and more besides. And these streets were also filled with salarymen, tourists, delivery people forever supplying the stores here, and many other people wandering by. My hotel was right on one of these side streets, much to my delight.

Those specific pictures look empty, but I was cherry-picking shots.

Anyway, I was three hours early, but I had contacted the hotel in advance and asked for permission to drop off my bags. They allowed it, and so I did so here, before taking off on a foot tour around the area. For brevity’s sake, most of the pictures here will be in a gallery, but I did a big tour of the southwestern and western parts of Akasaka with my three hours, stopping only for lunch. Lunch was a Tomyam Ramen Set that came with a salad roll sliced into four, and some chai tea, for 1000 yen, and it was excellent.

I resumed my walk after that. All in all, I wandered into several convenience stores, several supermarkets, a stationery shop, a bookshop, a liquor store, a park or two, passed by Sophia University and a couple other local schools, as well as the Imperial Palace area, and I really appreciated how walkable the entire area was (like most other areas in Japan I’ve seen so far besides Hakone), with plenty of side roads and such for people to hoof it on.