Stay in a Book Hotel in Tokyo

It was Ebi-kuns birthday last week, so we had a short midweek break. He is a book nerd, always has been, he'd rather dig into a good book that play computer games or waste time mindlessly scrolling on the socials.

His other loves are football and food. having just wrapped up the men's World Cup, I figured we had had enough football and focused on food and books. 

My goal was to fill the two days with as much of each as possible...

He has also seen an art exhibit in Harajuku he fancied going to and in a previous conversation talked about going to the big Maruzen book store in Tokyo.

He had been asked to participate in something run at a university in the morning, so we met up in at Tokyo station, had lunch then hit the book store. I left him to it and headed to the 4th floor which is all English/foreign language books and stationery. 

Once we had our fill and bought some books we headed up to Jimbocho, which is otherwise known as book town. We have visited here before, its nice to have a mooch around, there are some lovely shops but its not really a foreign tourist destination unless you read Japanese. 

The Book Hotel is close to the metro exit and if you need supplies, there are 3 conbinis a few minutes walk away to choose from.

In the lobby there are sofas and walls of books, the check-in was quick and easy, the staff were lovely. You need a hotel room key to use the lift which is a safety feature I approve of.

We had picked the white manga room and well... it was all white and filled with manga of all descriptions. The light from behind the bookcase at the bottom left is one of the bed nooks, also has manga in there and lights and plugs so you can recharge your phone etc.

There are plenty of amenities, green tea and coffee, kettle fridge and manga, did I mention the manga yet! They are pretty much all in Japanese, we found two English language ones. My husband had booked the room and there was some confusion (not the hotels fault) about the beds so we ended up with an extra bed in the room, which is what you can see in the bottom right. I don't think the room s designed for a long stay, more over night for maybe a night or two. 

One thing visitors to Japan might not know, if yo look at the left side of the photo below, there is a line marked on the floor, this is where you take your shoes off, leave them on the side of the door. The black things you can see on the room side are the slippers provided by the hotel. This is common practice in Japanese hotels. If there is no physical line, just leave your shoes as close to the door as possible and change into the supplied slippers.

Up in the loft there was another double bed and yes, more manga. Ebi-kun bagged this bed, I ended up in the nook and hubby on the third bed. We all slept well!

Unusually for a Japanese hotel, there was no bath tub but instead a sauna and shower! Not that we needed it considering the weather in the middle of the summer in Japan, lol. It was nice to have though, maybe we will visit in the winter next time!

There were plenty of towels, night wear, bathrobes and toothbrushes etc. 

One of the little extra touches that I loved was the manga welcome guide, explaining what you can and can't do. They ask that you return the manga to the place you picked it up from, I think it was organised in someway but not sure how. 

Usually when we go to stay somewhere, the hotel is really just somewhere to sleep but this place forced us to slow down and spend time inside (the air-conditioned) room and actually chill and relax.

We did go out in the evening to eat and visit a bookish speakeasy - more on that soon. And I picked up pastries for breakfast, the hotel doesn't do food. The check out is 11am too so we had a lovely relaxing start to the day.

What do you think? Would you like to stay in a book hotel? Let me know below, or if you have stayed in one and have recommendations, we'd be up for trying more places!

INFO

To make a reservation of find out more, you can check out The Book Hotel here.

Next stop Lilliput bookshop speakeasy bar

KEEP YOUR KIDS BUSY AND LEARNING WITH THE FREE 🔎 CURIOSITY FILES

New printable sent each week!

Japanese Toast Toppers

One thing I will never get bored of is the packaging in Japan. They really know how to do cute and ridiculous well!

I spotted these in the supermarket the other day, the whole display was a 10 for cuteness.

Form what I can workout (I didn't get sucked into buying any!) they are toppings for your toast.

Each animal has its own topping, so there is cinnamon, chocolate, caramel and garlic and numerous other flavours too. Whether this will last as a product we will have to wait and see but I tend to think that it will be one of those fad things that disappears as quickly as it appeared. 

If you are ever in Japan and think to yourself 'Oh, I should try that' DO IT STRAIGHT AWAY, I can't tell you the amount of times I have gone back a week later and the new exciting product has disappeared, never to be seen again!

And if you have tried these, let me know how it was!

We discovered another new cafe

This seems to have become a new family "thing" finding and trying out new cafes. I feel a bit guilty as I am sat in my favourite cafe, writing about another place! What a traitor!

I haven't attempted it yet but this looks like it's biking distance and have lovely outdoor seating, set in a really pretty garden. The cafe is part of a garden centre and is in the middle of the rice paddies. I think it is one of those places you need to know about, you wouldn't randomly drive by.

We sat under the pagoda where the grapes were growing, to be honest, the menu was very basic. Several spaghetti dishes, most of them containing fish or seafood or waffles. But the setting was lovely which distracted from the limited menu, the drinks were very good though!

They have a lovely big garden and a small area for the kids to play hoopla etc. There were a couple of kids throwing paper airplanes and running about.

And the bees! This is a bear bee, they are really big compared to your average Japanese bee but they have no sting, I have no idea what this purple plant is but the bees loved it, which makes me thing we need some in our garden.

This isn't what it appears to be, it's the back of an open shed where they sell stuff! Although it looks like a super cute house until you get up close. 

I would love to bike over and work in the garden, I expect it would be quite a quiet place to be during the week, but I'm not sure it will be one of our weekend lunch regulars just because the menu was so limited. 

Where do you work?

I have recently upgraded my office!

Well when I say I, I mean my mom did all the hard work and now I am reaping the rewards!

All the hours she put in sorting out our yard so it actually looks presentable has paid off and I'm so glad we invested in the parasol. I burn terribly so I rarely sat out. Now I can actually enjoy the yard and all the flowers and the weather is just oh-so-perfect at the moment. Give is a couple of weeks and the rainy season will be upon us. Not fun.

Most of the kids on our street are now at kindy or school, which means from about 8.00am onwards it is lovely and peaceful too but there re distractions, oh yes, the drama that goes on in the garden.

The most interesting has been the bees. We have blackberry brambles along one fence and I noticed a brown bee buzzing up and down but not collecting nectar, it was as if he was on guard duty.

It turned out that was exactly what he was doing, a little later a black bee (yes, they have black bees here) came to collect some nectar and the brown bee was not happy and started attacking the black bee. Chasing it off. A little while later the black bee would come back and the brown bee would have another go at it. We did a bit of research and it turns out that the black bee has no sting but the brown bee does.

Quite fascinating, that wasted a whole chunk of time!

And then there is Edvard and Munch, the two cute caterpillars munching their way through our orange tree. It's not a very big tree so I was a bit concerened! And Edvard was the bigger of the two and we reckoned he was about ready to go for 'the change'. We had been checking up on them every day but then we had a couple of really rainy days and.... Edvard and Munch had disappeared! We have no idea where they went, couldn't find a crysalis anywhere and no sign of the cute caterpillars. 

We are hoping that they found somewhere cool to hang out and change into butterflies and that a very hungry sparrow didn't eat the very hungry caterpillars!

We also have a couple of little lizards that come out and party when they think nobody is watching, I'm telling you, it's all happening in our back yard!

I could do with a better chair but you know, life could be worse! 

Do you have a nice place to work?

Nana Fran Survives Her First Week In Japan

Ebi-kun is back at school so we haven't been doing any adventuring - unless you count a trip to the garden centre!

Mom flew on her birthday so we made her a cake for when she arrived...

And she absolutely LOVED the velvety cat purse (not! my mom hates cats, she thinks that they are evil!) We did put a ticket for Cirque Du Soleil inside, so it wasn't all bad! We will be going next week to that, I can't wait, I've been wanting to go for years!

Ebi-kun is still on his architecture kick and so he used Minecraft to design mom a 'she shed' to her specifications. There was quite a bit of umming and ahhing because mom was being picky about the colour of the wood and the style of windows and really, Minecraft doesn't have a lot of options!

Mom has also made a special guest appearance of Ebi-kun eats! You will have to wait for the video to see what 'delight' she had to try, let's just say, it could have been worse! She did accidentally eat some ume-boshi earlier in the week which resulted in Ebi-kun and I collapsing in laughter. We have yet to crack open the natto.

And, she had been getting on down on the wii, probably the most exercise she has done for a long time. Whilst I have been working mom has been pottering around in our yard, which admittedly was a mess - I don't have the gardening gene. It's looking good, I'll share the pics when it is done.

I think we have pretty much worn her out... and she has another 3 weeks to go! Golden week started yesterday so we will be doing some adventuring and travelling around. If you use instagram you can follow us with #nanafraninjapan

The Nana Has Landed...

Mom arrived yesterday, great journey apparently and loved the whole business class experience! Make sure a difference being able to sleep on the flight, she looked well rested when I met her off the bus.

Of course Ebi-kun will be wearing her out, he is currently making her play on the wii! And she thought she was coming for a holiday!

We have some fun things planned but for the most part Ebi-kun will be at school, so I will have to keep her busy around the house...

Poking Around in Shibuya

When I was looking for somewhere to spend out art date I spotted a free Damien Hurst exhibit, I figured it would only be small as it was free so kept it as a back up. From the map it looked like the place was just behind the station, it wasn't too hard to find! It was in the creative space on the 8th floor of the Hachi building.

before we found Damien's work, we came across a small exhibit of Japanese puppets, we had fun deciding what the puppets were thinking...

Then we found the Damien Hurst room, there were just a handful of prints, personally, not impressed. Especially after just seeing Murakami's work Hurst looked like a 5 years olds doodles in comparison.

We had a wander around the rest of the floor, there was a food exhibit for the 47 prefectures, not a lot going on to be honest but the set up was nice.

Then we decided to go and find something to eat and went down to the basement, the floor with all the omiyage, one thing Japan does so well is the displays... look at this chocolate...

And these were all spices, we actually spent a lot of time wandering around oooing and ahhhing but didn't buy anything! There did look like some nice cafes and restaurants on the 7th floor too, maybe we will check them out next time!

A walk on the chilly side...

It seem to have been really warm so far this winter, we are finally getting to see some frost and maybe a bit of snow!

I like going for a walk in the mornings to clear my head before I start work, but I have to admit, when it's really cold it takes a LOT to get out of the door. OK, you folks in Canada where it's -40c, you can stop laughing now!

I certainly served my 'time' on the cold morning front growing up, having to sort out the horses every morning, not matter what the weather, they still needed to be fed and watered and unless the weather was really bad, exercised too. It was good training really, no matter how reluctant I was, it taught me that when you have responsibilities you just have to suck it up and get on with it!

Just like being a mom really!

One thing that I didn't like was having to take the horses up to the field which was about a mile from where we lived, most of the time it was OK but on cold icy days it was nothing short of terrifying. The road was narrow, twisty and steep. Scary enough going when there was nothing else on the road but even worse when you met traffic, not knowing if they would slide on the ice. Certainly part of my life with horses that I don't miss.

I do miss the horses though, one day, I'll have myself a gentle quarter-horse and a big paddock to ride in...

Awashima shrine - enough to give you nightmares

The day we went to Tomogashima shrine, we also went to Awashima shrine. We had to wait to buy tickets for the boat so we wandered down to the shrine then hung out until the tickets went on sale.

I'll show you the nice photos first...

Ebi-kun looking very grown up! Where did my little boy go?

I think he is looking more like daddy these days too (daddy has been watching America's Next Top Model and picking up modelling tips, can you tell? lol)

Lots of these birds around too, I think they are kites but don't quote me on that! It was fun just watching them hunt.

OK, now down to the shrine, Awashima-jinja is apparently famous for it's girls day ritual of floating dolls on the seas for the girls day festival (March 3rd). Just outside the shrine there are some little store selling fresh fish and seafood, if you are into that, I will give it a pass...

The shrine is full of dolls and they are all grouped together, it is pretty darn spooky and would be a great setting for a horror movie.

On one side were these dolls and the other side had geisha dolls... I can imagine them all coming to life...

There was an area where all the Japanese gods were hanging out, some of these are happy looking fellas so not quite as spooky.

My mom, who hates cats, would be freaking at this little lot...

The tanuki I found quite amusing, I think because they have such a fun expression. In Japanese mythology, tanuki (raccoon dogs) are shape shifters and they have large testicles, I'm not sure if the two ideas are linked! There is a great Studio Ghibli film called Pom Poko which I highly recommend, all about the tanuki fighting against the humans who are destroying their habitat.

The shrine is also for 'women's troubles' so women who have fertility or other internal issues go to pray there. It's a 10 minute walk from the port where you catch the boat for Tomogashima and there is a bit more info about it Awashima-jinja here.

Japanese Supermarkets... a clever idea!

We recently upgraded our supermarket system! In our local supermarket the trolley look like this...

Yep, basically it's a basket carrying device, one on the top and one on the bottom. For those of you who live in parts of the world that have those trolleys that a big enough to fit a football team inside, getting used to using this somewhat smaller version can be quite an adjustment!

What we used to do was take cloth bags with us but we decided to buy pink baskets instead. IT's BRILLIANT!

Normally the cashier will scan everything, taking it from one basket into another then you pay and take your basket of scanned items and pack them into your own bags (we always take cloth bags with us). 

Using the pink baskets, the cashier, scans the items, pops everything into the pink basket, you pay, then she add a bit of tape to the handle to show you have paid and you pop the basket in your car!

Saves so much time! The baskets are about ¥350, we usually have 2 baskets worth of shopping so we bought 2. I put everything away when we get home and the baskets go back in the car. Life just got easier - sweet!

Sunday Morning Rituals...

Now the Aikido dojo has been refurbished Ebi-kun is back at the regular dojo at the same time every week. I used to sit and watch, or read a book whilst he practices but then a new mall opened 5 minutes walk away! Excitement. Trouble is, the mall doesn't open until 10am and aikido starts at 9am. Bummer.

So I have taken to going for a long walk and exploring the neighbourhood. We used to live a 10 minute bike ride from the dojo but I never really explored this end of town, I say town, I mean rice paddies!

The rainy season is upon us so the flowers are out, these are stunning but make me a little sad because I know the hot humid weather will be with us soon...

Something you don't see much of, graffiti, interesting that it's often in (bad) English! I have no idea why, maybe it looks cooler or something!

Very humid day, looks like all the rice has been planted, the gray valleys now look green and the paddies are so noisy with the frogs!

One of the honour boxes, this one is a bit flash and the only one I've seen in this neck of the woods sell flowers! There is a price for the veg and flowers, you drop your money in the box and take what you paid for. I do love that these exist!

Then when I've done my hours ramble I head up to the mall for a nice coffee and some "me time"! Not a bad way to start the day.

Larking About Or Creating Art?

A few years back I bought some light sticks for camp and now we can't go without a supply of them! Ebi-kun actually picked the packs up this time and since we were in the cabin, it was REALLY dark. I decided to set up the camera and have some fun with it....

We tried various exposures and different moves to see which would get the best effects, we even had Taylor Swift on to help with the groovy moves!