Japan with Landon

July 27, 2025 Landon and I head off to Tokyo, Japan for a one on one Nana time.

At YVR prior to takeoff.  It’s a 10 hour flight to Narita airport.

It’s a long flight.  Landon and I play poker, watch movies and say “are we there yet?” more times than I care to count.  Boring but uneventful which is good.  We land safely then the juggling starts.  I have to purchase a Suica card for Landon for use on transit and load it with money, then I find the place where I can send our luggage to the hotel so we don’t have to haul it on the train.  Then we have to find JR East to purchase tickets on the Narita Express to take us in to Tokyo.  We accomplished all that and were on the train into Tokyo two hours later.  Very comfortable ride in but when we got to Tokyo station what a mad house. It was rush hour and it was packed. So glad we weren’t pulling luggage!

We decide to walk to our hotel which is only 20 minutes and after 10 hours sitting on the plane we could do with the exercise. Google Maps gets us there.  It’s a lovely evening.  We check in to Tosei Hotel Cocone Kanda and go to find a 7-11 for dinner. 

Get some gyoza, chicken skewers, edamame and sushi.  Quite a meal and we’re wiped.  It’s lights out at 9:00 pm.

Landon modelling our housecoat and slippers provided by the hotel. Lots of toiletries provided. Very nice.

It’s our first full day so we head off to Asakusa to see the Senso Ji Temple and shop the Nakamise Street which has 89 shops on it. It’s so hot.  It’s around 34 degrees so not too comfortable. We try to find shade when we can. There are some misters which help but we do take cover in a Starbucks for a cold latte and enjoy their air conditioning.  

We walk around then decide to get on the train and go to Ueno as there is a park and zoo there that we thought we could check out.

St. John’s

End of the tour is in St. John’s 

We go for a tour of St. John’s 

These fishermen are loading up their crab traps to take out.

As we drive along we see these doors in the hillside.  These opened to spaces in the rock where munitions were stored.

Where Terry Fox started his run across Canada





Signal Hill









Granite cliffs of the Avalon Peninsula



Panorama shot of the harbour from Signal Hill



Basilica of St. John the Baptist

Jelly Bean row.  Colourful houses in the Victorian architecture

Our entertainment for our farewell dinner.

Our boat tour of the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.



The island ahead which is inhabited by hundreds of puffins.



We see whales and dolphins 

And puffins

Jim and Marlene with a puffin stuffy.

The most easterly point in North America.

WWII bunkers

Lighthouse in the mist.

I am really going to miss fantastic seafood chowder.



The Rooms is a museum at the top of the hill in St. John’s.  Excellent!

Amazing displays.  This is a carving done on a whale breastbone 



We check out this club at the JID Hotel.  This is on the eighth floor and it’s amazing.  It wasn’t open when we went however the owner was there and allowed us to look around.

It’s so beautiful.  And that’s a wrap.  We head to the airport tomorrow, homeward bound.

Brigus

Such a beautiful town.

The Convent…now houses an excellent coffee shop where we stopped for cappuccino 





Hawthorne Cottage where Captain Bob Bartlett lived with his mother when he wasn’t off on an expedition.  He went on more than 20 Artic voyages in the 20th century. 







The tunnel that Bob Bartlett blasted through to make it easier to reach the water on the other side rather than going around. Seems like that’s how he approached his explorations in the Arctic with blasting through ice flows.





Beautiful homes.  So well kept.

Trinity

Since people didn’t have basements they built root cellars to store food through the winter.







I saw a plane here which was identical to one that my grandfather used.