Monday in Tokyo

Posted on 2013/04/01 08:22:52 (April 2013).

[Monday 25th March 2013]
The final week of our month's stay in Japan, and I'd be returning to Tokyo to work from the office there again.

I got the shinkansen from Hiroshima to Tokyo in the office, getting me there in time for lunch. Had a fairly quiet afternoon working in the office, then popped out in the evening to revisit Chien-Fu - the recently opened vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Roppongi which we'd been to on the first night. I'm not sure I was quite as impressed second time round, but maybe that's partly just down to the economy of scale you get in a large group in Chinese restaurants, meaning you can try lots of different dishes.

I tried their ma po ramen tonight - which I'd also had at Rohlan recently. It was pretty good, but it occurred to me what an extremely awkward and messy dish to eat ramen is. At one point I accidentally dropped the renge (spoon) into the bowl and splashed oily red soup all over my shirt and trousers. Oh well.

Back to the hotel after that to do a bit more work. I'd decided to stay at the Grand Hyatt for the final week rather than return to the Ritz Carlton - they're both on the list of approved hotels (with corporate rates) for when visiting the Tokyo office, but the Grand Hyatt is the slightly closer of the two. The rooms aren't quite as large or as smart as the Ritz Carlton, for one thing it's ten years old now (ancient in Japanese terms) whilst the Ritz Carlton is less than five. Also, all the staff spoke with American accents, which was a bit of a disappointment... but to some extent a hotel is a hotel, and it would probably have got quite boring to have spent a whole two weeks in the same place.

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