Tokyo Bling Hunt

Hi Mom, We are at Tokyo for Go phone bling and train ride. By Will To Mom: Bye

Last Sunday, William and I got up in the morning. Caroline had stayed up quite late reading a good book and was sleeping in quite late. William and I discussed potential plans for the day over breakfast and I mentioned that I wanted to find Go stone bling for my phone. I had met one of my Go instructors in a Go center in Tokyo a year or so ago and I'd noticed that they had a store in the center and figured if anyone had one, they would. It would be a frivolous trip with lots of train riding for a hard target minor purchase, but it was a day clear of any plans, William loves planning and executing train trips, Caroline could use some peace and quiet in the house, and I needed phone bling! So, William wrote the above note for Mom, ran quietly upstairs, got dressed, and brought down his train map and proceeded to plan our route for the day as I showered and got dressed.

By the time I was ready to go, William had the master plan. The trip up was pretty straight forward, but the way back was not quite so. Apparently, William's goal for a train ride is not about the quickest, easiest, or cheapest way from A to B, it's about which train lines he has ridden in the process. The way back took us out to Shibuya and onto the Tokyu line back to Yokohama. That is why he says in the video, "...we'll start on Keikyu (our local train line) and end on Keikyu." Everything else coming back was different than how we got there. He spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a method to include a Shinkansen (Bullet Train) ride in, but it would have taken longer to get to the Shinkansen than it would to get straight to Tokyo. Not that this mattered much to William, but I did exercise some veto rights on his initial plan...

With a plan and map in hand, we started our trek at 9:30 AM. I pretty much let William lead the way. The only time we got lost was when I couldn't remember exactly how to get to the Go store. We first exited the wrong side of Tokyo station, and then tried to make our way through the MASSIVE underground mall to the other side. I remembered that the tower that the Go store is in had an entrance in the underground mall. I actually found it but wasn't convinced, so we headed up to street level to see if I could recognize the outside. Sure enough, that was it and we entered the building and headed up. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember which floor it was on. We got off on the 4th floor and then started looking around. We eventually got to the 9th floor and found it... I didn't find cell phone bling, but I did find another traditional Japanese thingy that did have a miniature carved shell Go stone on it. An ear wax pick. It was close enough and I could remove the Go stone from the ear pick and put it on my phone.

So, with prize in hand we headed back. William took the lead again and did really well. I almost think that he could find his way from Tokyo to our house without too much trouble all by himself. With the unfamiliar Tokyu line we took from Shibuya to Yokohama, William panicked a bit thinking the train took a different route than we wanted, but we held our ground and eventually convinced ourselves it was going to Yokohama.

We walked back up to our house at 1:30 PM and found Caroline freshly awake as of some 20 minutes previous. She was absolutely thrilled with the day off, the peace and quiet, and the lovely note explaining our absence. William got a train adventure and I got my finely sculpted clam shell miniature Go stone cell phone bling... though, after I proudly showed it to Caroline and she responded "What is that, a Mentos?" perhaps I'm not quite as thrilled with it...