Lazy Day

Monday was a day off for Chris.  The second Monday in January is a National holiday in Japan, Coming of Age Day.  It celebrates and congratulates everyone who has reached the age of maturity (age 20) over the past year.  As a result everything is pretty much closed.  On top of that it was our first rainy day since we have been in Japan.  When we woke up it was very dreary, raw and cold looking.  On top of that it was pouring for much of the day so we decided to stay in for the morning and not really get up and moving around until almost lunch time.

We finally got moving around 12:30.  We met Chris’s co-worker in the lounge and without having a drink we left almost immediately.  Our destination was the Nagoya-Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where they were having a temporary exhibit on American Landscapes.  We figured what would be better to do on a rainy day than go to the museum.  The museum is one train stop from the hotel.  We used our railpass to save us the $2 fare and we arrived at our station in about 3 minutes.  Trains in Japan are so efficient.  Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed inside of the museum so we have nothing to show for it.  The paintings they had were very nice and we recognized many of the places in the portraits.

After the museum we were kind of hungry so we headed to a British Pub for a couple of drinks and some appetizers.  At that point we decided that since it was a crappy day we would bar-hop.  So we had one drink each at the first place and hopped on a subway for a busier part or town where there would be more places to drink.  Once we arrived at our subway stop, we headed up to ground level towards our first place, which was closed.  Then we went to the 2^nd place, then the 3^rd, then the 4^th.  All were closed.  We found out that Japanese don’t start drinking until later in the day. Most places didn’t open until 5 or 6 which was unfortunate since it was barely 4:00.  We slowly walked back to our hotel, not seeing any places open along the way.  We made a quick stop at the 100 yen store to buy Chris’s co-worker a bottle opener.  It seems he keeps taking the free beer from the lounge but he has no way to open it once he gets back to his room.

We then made our way to the lounge and once we sat down, the rain magically stopped and we took some great pictures of the city from our 36^th floor lounge. 

 

We ended up hanging around the lounge until about 6 when we headed downstairs into the train station for something to eat.  We ended up going to a ramen and gyoza place where we had a bowl of ramen each, a glass of beer, a plate of gyoza, unlimited cold tea and a small bowl of edaname for about $15 each.  We then headed back upstairs for the remainder of the night.

Inside the lounge

Self-serve.  They are really on top of refilling the bowl.  You take a bottle of beer they are replenishing within seconds.