Day 17 today was our last major relocation from Nagano prefecture back to Tokyo. We initially toyed with the idea of racing from Nagano to Tokyo and flying home on the same day, but we couldn’t find a suitable flight departing Tokyo in the late afternoon to accommodate that. We also did not want to run the risk of facing possible delays in this relocation and missing our flight home: so early on in planning, we decided to live with the inconvenience of finding a last property to stay in that would make it easy to get to the airport we’d be flying from: in this case, Narita i.e. the more inconvenient airport in Tokyo to.
So, our movement plan: catch the 7:30AM local train from Matsumoto Station to Nagano Station – same as on Day 16 yesterday. Then when we’d arrived at Nagano Station, we have 8 minutes to make the 8:58AM Shinkansen connection from Nagano Station to Ueno Station where we’d booked a nearby hotel for a single night. We were a little paranoid about possible delays that would make us miss our Shinkansen connection – more so since we’d reserved tickets for this specific ride. So, we researched online to know the exact platform at Nagano Station and what level we’d need to run, with our luggage haha, towards.
It was all good, and we made it to the Shinkansen platform with minutes to spare. And we reached Ueno Station at 10:14AM this morning, got a little disoriented as it’s a large and also busy station, but eventually found our way to our hotel – APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae – where we were able to leave our luggage in order to explore the Ueno area.
We’d kept our Day 17 itinerary in Ueno very light: we’d just hang around the general vicinity and visit Ameyoko Street, and the National Museum of Nature and Science that’s a manageable 8 minute walk from the hotel through Ueno park. The missus had read very positive reviews at this large museum, so our expectations were high. We ended up being disappointed: most of the exhibits in the general admission halls were static and not interactive. I guess we visited a fantastic science museum in Nagoya last year that we were expecting something similar in Tokyo.
We spent just an hour in the museum before the kids got visible bored. So, out we went to explore Ueno Park a little and count the minutes till 3PM where we could check into the hotel and vegetate.
That’s a wrap for Day 17. We’ve retired back to our hotel after dinner to relax, pack, for the kids to write their final entries into their journals, and for me to continue writing my blog entries. Day 18’s entry tomorrow will likely be a short one!