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(I missed posting an update yesterday as I was away from WiFi. So this is Saturday’s and Sunday’s events combined. Also, I haven’t had time to upload any photos yet, so this post doesn’t have any photos.)

Saturday 1 March

We set an alarm for 07:30 this morning. We planned to message my in-laws to arrange a breakfast time, but we were ready to go well before them, so my wife and I headed over to the City Bakery by ourselves. I had the granola this time, which was good, but a very small serve. I’d normally have three times that much at home for breakfast. We were finished pretty much as the in-laws arrived, so we just said hi in passing and went back to our room to finish packing and check out of the hotel. We arranged to meet after checking out at 10:30. Everyone dropped their luggage at the hotel luggage room, to be picked up in the evening.

We caught a Yamanote Line train north to Nishi-Nippori, where we changed for a Chiyoda Line train to take us two stops to Nezu. This is further north than I’ve ever been before in Tokyo, seeing new sights and neighbourhoods. Right near Nezu Station is Nezu Jinja, a Shinto shrine. This one is smaller and less well known that some others, but notable for having hundreds of red torii gates, which are rarer in Tokyo than at the famous temples in Kyoto. I thought this would be a great finish to our time in Tokyo for my in-laws.

When we got to the temple, there were a handful of market stalls just inside the entrance, selling mostly foodstuffs: rice crackers, mochi, cakes, and one selling fresh vegetables.Beyond this was a small pond with dozens of tortoises sunning themselves on a rock. People were tossing food, and dozens of pigeons were flocking around for it, plus another couple of birds which I couldn’t identify until I looked them up on eBird: brown-eared bulbuls. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen this species before. A bit later I got a decent photo of one, so that’s good too.

Near here was the beginning of the path under the torii. I was surprised how small they were, each one with an opening basically the size of a door, not much bigger than would allow a person through. I had been expecting them to be much larger, like the ones at Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto. Still, it was fun and very scenic to walk through the corridor created by the gates, and there weren’t nearly as many people as in Kyoto. There was one Spanish couple who took forever taking photos of each other at multiple scenic spots, causing us to have to wait interminably for a photo without them in it, but for the most part it was pretty quiet and easy to get good photos.

After finishing the torii walk, we explored the rest of the shrine, with one large courtyard and building, and a few smaller outbuildings and features. It wasn’t a large shrine, so we finished without taking too long and then began walking towards the Yanaka Ginza shopping street for our next sight of the day.

On the way we stopped at the Art Cafe Polypus for lunch and drinks. My wife decided to go explore around the area on her own while the rest of us ate. I got a chicken curry donburi and it came with a drink as a lunch set, so I chose the house-made ginger lemonade. Both the food and drink were pretty good. We sat up in a room on the third floor which just had three tables in it, while the counter and a few other tables were on the second floor. We thought we were the only customers until we left, when we saw that the second floor was full of people.

Rejoining my wife, we walked towards Yanaka Ginza. This is an old shopping street that survived the war, with many older buildings crowding a narrow street lined with shops. As we got near, the tourist density grew, showing that this place was more well-known that Nezu Jinja. The shopping street itself was picturesque, but somewhat crowded, with hundreds of people walking in both directions. There were street food stalls, restaurants, and various shops, many with interesting things to look at. My wife bought us a ceramic bowl, like a slightly small rice bowl, in the wabi-sabi style with some asymmetry to the shape.

After reaching the end of the street we were at Nippori Station, where we boarded a train back to Shinagawa. We arrived there about 15:30. My in-laws went into the hotel to rest up a bit, while my wife and I ventured out again to walk around and keep moving, rather than sit and for a couple of hours. We walked back over to Gotanda to look around some of the shops there. On the way we passed two embassies, the embassy of Iceland, and one with the plaque on the door written in Cyrillic script that I couldn’t read but later searched and found it to be the Embassy of Serbia.

When we reached Gotanda, there was a small shopping mall, but it didn’t have a lot in it. After walking around a few of the streets M. decided she could do with a coffee and I searched cafes in the area, finding Café au Lait Tokyo. This was also up an unassuming old staircase on the second floor of a building. When we arrived they said they only had room at the bar for us, so we sat there. There was another room up the front with a window facing the street where there were a few tables with very plush lounge chairs and sofas. They only served café au lait coffee, but you could customise it in various ways with amounts of milk, amounts of sugar, different toppings, flavours, types of milk, etc. They guy behind the bar gave us each a small slip of paper and highlighter pens to mark our customisations. I was worried they’d ask me to order a coffee in order to sit there, but they were okay when we only ordered one drink. My wife also got a grilled cheese sandwich, asking for no ham on the ham and cheese menu item, and then having to say no mustard or ketchup either when the guy asked if she wanted those. I chose a mini dessert of a caramel mouse cake, which was a smallish serving, but enough to satisfy a sweet tooth. The coffee came in a small wide bowl without any handle, and she said it was good.

From here we decided to take a further walk down towards Osaki, along the Meguro River. I thought we might see some more birds, but the river was very canal-like and we didn’t see any. We found the Osaki New City shopping mall and looked around. It was larger and better than the one at Gotanda, but not very big, with only two moderate sized floors of shops.

Once done with that we headed back to the hotel, via another route. At first we passed mainly office buildings, but we turned into a residential neighbourhood and this was much more interesting, with a mix of old houses and some very new and expensive looking apartment buildings. We arrived back at the hotel at 18:00.

We met up with my in-laws, collected our luggage, and left for Haneda Airport about 18:20. We caught the Keikyu Line Haneda Express and arrived at the airport just before 19:00. We passed through security and customs, which were a little busy so it took some time, and then had a couple of hours to wait for our flight. My wife and I did some stretching exercises to help ensure we didn’t get stiff or cramped during the long hours of sitting on the flight. We boarded and departed just a few minutes behind schedule.

Sunday 2 March

Despite not really sleeping on the flight, the time seemed to pass faster than I expected, and before we knew it they were turning the lights on for the breakfast service. We flew into Sydney Airport from the north, and had a good view of the city out the left side of the plane. We landed just before 09:30.

Unfortunately there were several delays getting home. First, the terminal was full when we arrived, so the plane had to wait on the tarmac until a gate became available. Then there were a few flights arriving at the same time, and there was a long queue to get through the automated passport checking gates, so that took some time. We didn’t have to wait for checked luggage, so we left my in-laws at the baggage claim since were were heading to our respective homes by different transport, so there was no point waiting for them. My wife and I headed down to the train station and boarded a train to Central where we intended to change for a train on our own line that would drop us a short walk from home.

But as we pulled into Central it was clear that something was wrong. None of the other platforms in the entire station had so much as a single person on them waiting for trains. This could mean only one thing: the trains were not running. Obviously the airport train was, but it seemed no other train line was. Checking online, I discovered that the only trains running were essentially a shuttle between the airport and Central, and the Metro lin, which was also running a reduced service, with a shuttle between Central and Martin Place, and another shuttle from Martin Place to Tallawong. We could take the Metro and walk a longer distance from the nearest station to our home. Normally this would be a single train, but today for some reason we had to change trains at Martin Place. So our trip home had an extra train change and a walk about twice as long at the home end.

My wife stopped for an iced coffee in the Sydney heat and humidity that was a shock after being in winter Tokyo. We arrived at home, for one more shock.

When the lift door opened on our floor of our apartment building, we were greeted by the sight of a large plastic bin sitting in the corridor, catching a continual stream of drips leaking from a light fitting in the ceiling. The bin was half full, and the carpet in the corridor soaking wet!

We quickly went into our apartment and checked if the ceiling was leaking water anywhere. Thankfully it was all dry, but this was a definite moment of panic, thinking maybe our bedroom or living room might have been flooded while we were away. A building management representative arrived soon afterwards with a plumber, and I asked what the story was, and the guy said the leak only happened two or three hours ago, and was a hot water pipe in the corridor, which the plumber was about to fix. Phew!

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That ends the travel diary, but we had a few others things to do today. We went grocery shopping to restock with vegetables and fruit and milk. My wife’s friend brought Scully back over to drop her off, and my wife went with them to catch up and have a coffee out while I prepared for my ethics classes. I had three tonight, and it was a bit of a struggle with tiredness, but I managed okay.

Time for an early night to bed and hopefully a good sleep before tomorrow, which will be my usual very busy Monday.

Friday 28 February

We set an alarm for 07:30, to give me time to get ready and leave at 08:00 to walk to the last day of my ISO Photography Standards meeting. I had some leftover sweet food items as a makeshift partial breakfast before heading out, and picked up an onigiri and a cup of vegetable sticks from a 7-11 near the meeting venue to fill it out with something a bit healthier.

The last technical session was about image information content, measuring camera reproduction fidelity using metrics based on Shannon information theory. Following this we had the administrative closing sessions, going over action items and planning for future meetings. The next will be in Berlin in June, which my wife and I will also be travelling to. At the start of the lunch break I had to participate in editing of resolutions, a job which falls to one representative from each country. As the only Australian attending, I always end up doing this task.

For lunch I walked over to the MSB Tamachi building, which has a couple of floors of restaurants. I looked around before choosing こびんちょ (Kobincho) a place that had a lunch special of a bowl of udon noodles with a small tempura-don bowl of tempura prawns and vegetables on rice. It was pretty good!

After lunch, the meeting concluded at 14:29, one minute earlier than listed in the agenda.

I walked back via another different route, this time taking a walkway along one of the canals running north-south through Shibaura. This was a more pleasant walk, and I took my time a bit since I saw several different birds: mallards, tufted ducks, eastern spot-billed ducks, eurasian coots, a white wagtail, and lots and lots of black-headed gulls. I also saw what looked like an eagle soaring high overhead, but couldn’t identify the species.

As I neared the hotel, walking through Shinagawa Station, I spotted a very bewildered looking young woman with a large suitcase looking around in obvious confusion. I asked her if she needed help finding anything and she answered in an American accent, saying she wanted to get tickets for the Narita Express to the airport and her phone had died and she didn’t know where to go. I knew there were multiple ticket offices in the station for different train companies, and checked which was the right one on my phone, then pointed her in the right direction. She was very grateful – I hope she made it to the airport okay!

I got back to the hotel a bit after 15:00, and the others were waiting for me in the hotel lobby, keen to go out again! They’d spent the morning walking down to Kitashinagawa to explore the old style neighbourhood there, which we’d discovered ourselves last trip. But now, rejoining me, the plan was to head out to Sekaido, the giant art supply store in Shinjuku. My mother-in-law is a keen artist, working in pencil and watercolour, and wanted to browse and maybe buy some things that would be difficult to get at home. And my wife has recently taken up ink sketching and watercolour as well.

We took a Yamanote Line train to Shinjuku and headed across to Sekaido. The walk passed through a vibrant shopping district, and the others stopped to check out another of the shops before we got to our destination. Once in Sekaido, we explored the third floor with painting supplies, then the second with paper and drawing supplies. This took some time as there was so much to see, and everyone but me bought a few things. We briefly looked around the ground floor, which had stationery, before leaving to head back to Shinjuku Station to catch a Marunouchi Line subway train to Akasaka-Mitsuke Station.

Here we walked a short distance to Hitori Shabu Shabu Nanadaime Matsugoro, a shabu shabu restaurant which I’d booked for dinner. When we walked in the door, a woman asked if we had a reservation, and when I said yes, she knew my name instantly without having to check. She showed us to four adjacent bar seats that were part of an oval surrounding the central kitchen area, and then explained the menu to us in moderately good English. She was extremely friendly and helpful, and after our meal my wife gave her one of the Australia stickers we’d brought to give to helpful people.

We all ordered food, my wife getting the vegetable plate, while the rest of us got a meat plate, which came with vegetables as well, and we all ordered an additional bowl of rice. The meals came with ponzu sauce and sesame sauce, and additional condiments of chopped spring onion and dried garlic to mix in to taste. There was also a small bottle of chilli oil, which my wife mistook for soy sauce and poured a lot on her rice before tasting it and realising her error! My in-laws had never had shabu shabu before and were very impressed with the variety of ingredients and flavours of the sauces, and the fun of cooking everything yourself in the steaming hotpot, which was really pleasing. I was a little worried they might not like some of the new food experiences, but it’s been a positive experience for them, which is great.

After the meal, we pondered finding some place to have drinks and maybe a small dessert. I searched the area on Google Maps and located the Bar Wagokoro Akasaka, which was described in Maps as a “cocktail chocolate pairing bar”, which sounded ideal, and it was only two short blocks away. We walked there, but had trouble locating it until my wife spotted a photo outside one building which showed cocktails and chocolates. There was a logo with Japanese on it, but no other indication what sort of a place it was, and the indication that it was on the third floor.

We went up in the tiny lift and emerged in an intimate room with only 15 seats: two tables of four and seven along the bar, facing an impressive wall of whiskies. The top shelf was entirely Japanese whiskies, the second shelf entirely Scotch, and the lowest shelf had other whiskies and various other bar essentials and liqueurs.

The bartender, immaculate in a blue pinstripe suit, brought us English menus and explained the various chocolates and selection options. I chose an “oriental chocolate cocktail” with cinnamon and cardamom, my sister-in-law got a “ruby chocolate and raspberry” cocktail, my wife got a non-alcoholic version of the same, and her mother chose an apple one.

I ordered the sweets assortment, which allowed two choices from the menu of 21 different types of chocolates, plus it came with a selection of other small chocolates, bites of gateaux, and dried fruits, presented on a spectacular patterned plate, while my in-laws chose individual chocolates each. The bartender also brought us complimentary rice crackers.

The drinks and chocolates were extremely well presented and delicious. The bartender was the only staff present, and also the owner according to some online reviews, and very friendly. M. gave him another of our Australia stickers in appreciation. This was a truly delightful find and a delicious way to end our last dinner before heading to the airport tomorrow.

We walked the short distance back to Akasaka-Mitsuge Station and caught a Ginza Line train to Shimbashi, where we changed for a Tokaido Line train to Shinagawa. The Tokaido Line trains are more express and Shinagawa was only one stop away. We got off there and headed back to our hotel for our last night in Tokyo.

Thursday 27 February

We had a leisurely start this morning, getting ready and planning to meet my in-laws at 08:00 for breakfast. We met up and walked over to the City Bakery at Shinagawa Station. We managed to get a table together after a man moved to make way for us. I had scrambled eggs with prosciutto, while the others had baked goods and coffee.

We headed off to catch a train about 09:00, taking the through train on the Keikyu Line to the Asakusa subway line, and alighting at Asakusa Station. My sister-in-law had looked up a cafe that does intricate three-dimensional caffe latte art and wanted to check it out, and it was only a few steps from one of the subway exits, so we walked there, but discovered the place indicated by Google Maps was an empty building! Oh well.

We continued on to the Kaminarimon Gate and then through it to the array of market stall shops beyond. The area was bustling with tourists, though not nearly as crowded as last time M. and I were here in summer, and of course nowhere near as uncomfortably hot. We browsed slowly along the shops, with the others buying a few things along the way.

Eventually we reached the Senso-ji temple. Last time my wife and I were here, the crowds and the weather made us turn back before even going in to see the temple. But today was a lot better and we entered through the huge gate leading into the main courtyard. This Buddhist temple was very different from the Shinto shrine of Meiji Jingu. Here instead of purchasing offerings you could buy fortunes, randomised by shaking a tube of numbered sticks and then taking a printed fortune from a matching numbered drawer. My wife got one and drew a “regular fortune”. The instructions printed near the fortune area said if you get a good fortune you should take it with you, whereas if you get a bad fortune you should tie the paper to nearby racks to leave the bad luck behind you.

We exited to the west side of the main building into the surrounding gardens. These were not very large, but contained well-kept hedges and trees, and a lot of statues, carvings, stone lanterns, smaller outbuildings, and standing stones carved with masses of Japanese text. Reading the informational signs revealed that some of these objects were hundreds of years old, with one stone thought to have been made as far back as 1150.

From this west side of the temple, the others spotted an interesting looking side street with shops that they wanted to check out, so we continued in that direction rather than heading back towards Kaminarimon. We end up doing a large loop around several blocks, but partway through we decided to stop for lunch. It was getting close to midday and we needed to be back on a train heading south soon after 13:00 for me to make the resumption of my ISO Standards meeting at 14:00. (The morning was taken off to allow attendees to visit the CP+ camera show in Yokohama, during the VIP and media opening time, before it opened to the general public.)

I searched the area for suitable eating places to satisfy our various food requirements, and found a cafe called Coffee Kan not far away. It did simple sandwiches and pancakes and some rice and pasta dishes. We got a table straight away and ordered sandwiches, while my wife decided to go out and look around and have the scone she’d brought from our breakfast venue. The sandwiches were pretty good, with nice fresh ingredients and thick fluffy white bread slices.

After eating we met up with my wife outside, who had wandered off to look at some more shops in the area. We walked back to Asakusa Station and boarded a train heading south. On the train I realised that it didn’t seem to stop at Shinagawa, and looking at the line map I realised the subway line branched at Sengakuji, and we were on a train that went the other way. My wife confirmed this with a nice older lady who spoke English, who told us we needed to change trains there. This was only one stop past Mita, where I needed to get off for my ISO meeting, so I suggested we all get off there, and I could check the destination indicators to see what train they needed to get to Shinagawa. I figured it’d probably be the next train behind us. The old lady got off with us and said she was going to Shinagawa too, so she could help my co-travellers to get there. I left them at Mita, exiting the station and walking over to Shibaura for my afternoon of meetings.

This afternoon the first technical session was on image flare characterisation. There was a lot of discussion on determining the appropriate exposure time for taking photos to measure image flare. This is a tricky topic because normal camera exposure is designed for scenes that humans might look at, with more or less even lighting for the most part. But to measure image flare you need to take photos of bright points of light in a dark room, and the camera exposure system freaks out and doesn’t know what to do. So we have to come up with a way of defining what the exposure should be so that you can see and measure the camera flare on the resulting images, without it being overexposed.

The second session was discussing low light performance with hand-held camera shake to evaluate image stabilisation methods. For this one, Dietmar had collated the experiments he’d performed using all of the meeting participants as observers, judging the image quality of various degradations (the one I did on Tuesday). He’d done some preliminary statistics and showed off the numbers. He plans to run many more tests with other observers to build up a solid foundation for determining threshold levels for image acceptable/unacceptable degradation due to low light and image stabilisation.

We finished just before 17:00 and I walked back to our hotel. I walked a different way this time, crossing over the canal to the Shiba side and walking along the main road back to Shinagawa. I detoured off the main road to take a couple of back streets in one area, that looked on the map like it had a lot of shops and restaurants. However it turned out to be mostly residential with only a few restaurants scattered here and there.

After rejoining M. in the hotel room, we arranged to meet T. and K. at 18:00 to go to dinner. We had nothing booked for tonight, with a vague plan to maybe go get some ramen, since ramen places don’t take bookings. I’d done some checking online and found that Ippudo did vegan ramen, and they had a branch in Gotanda, just two stops away on the Yamonote Line, so it was simple to get to. But today at the meeting I double checked the menu and discovered that only certain Ippudo stores had the vegan ramen dishes. The only places in Tokyo were at Shinjuku and Ginza. So we decided to head to Ginza, where the Ippudo was very close to one of the exits from Higashi-Ginza Station.

We arrived and there were two couples ahead of us in the queue for tables, but there were empty seats inside being cleaned up, so we didn’t have long to wait before we were all ushered in. We had a good table for four in the back corner. I ordered the “Akamaru” ramen, which is an Ippudo innovation based on the more traditional “Shiromaru” ramen, which my in-laws opted for when I explained the differences in flavour and richness. My wife decided not to have the vegan ramen after all, and opted for some simple rice with a soft-boiled egg. We also had a serve of gyoza to share as a side. My ramen was really good, and in-laws declared that theirs was really delicious too.

We headed back to our hotel. My mother-in-law turned in for the night while the rest of us went up to the bar at Table 9 Tokyo, the fancy bar/restaurant on the 39th floor of our hotel. It was very funky with ambient dance music and lots of colour-changing lights. The drinks menu was impressive, containing some super expensive whiskies. We had a drink each and stared out at the mesmerising view of Tokyo at night. Our table faced a window looking north to the centre of the city, so it was full of buildings and lights.

After this we headed back down to our rooms for the night.

Wednesday 26 February

We got up at 06:15 and prepared for a quick departure. We need to be at the LOVE sculpture (by Robert Indiana) in Shinjuku by 07:50 for my wife and her mother and sister to meet up for their guided day tour to Mount Fuji. I ran down to the 7-11 to get a caffe latte for my wife while she got up and dressed. I quickly ate a couple of the onigiri I’d bought last night and we dashed out to meet my in-laws in the hotel lobby. I led us all over to Shinagawa Station where we caught a train to Shinjuku again (as for last night’s dinner). Being only 07:00, rush hour hadn’t really gotten underway and the train was not full. This time we wanted a western exit. We found a long tunnel that led for a few blocks west until I decided to ascend to street level. From there it was an easy walk a block to the sculpture meeting point.

We were a bit early and my sister-in-law went to a nearby 7-11 to get a coffee. The tour operator arrived and had the crowd of people waiting there queue up for two different tours, the Mount Fuji one, and a Tokyo city tour. The first was the most popular, with about 50 or 60 people queueing up to register. There were about four buses parked nearby, so presumably they are taking multiple loads of people. My wife got in the queue and I went to collect the in-laws and show them where she was waiting.

With the tour group met up, I left them to head back to Shibaura for today’s ISO meeting session. I thought the best way might be to take a subway line east across central Tokyo, but checking routes revealed the quickest way there was in fact to hop back on the Yamanote Line and go back south through Shinagawa to Tamachi Station. So I did that rather than wrangle with multiple subway lines and changing trains. The station and train was more busy now, with the train ride being full, but not overly crowded. I made it to the CIPA building by 08:30, in plenty of time.

The first technical session today was a discussion of revising the standard on measuring camera resolution. An expert proposed making changes to take into account the fact that different cameras have different colour conversion matrices because of the construction of their RGB filters, so converting the raw signals to luminance to calculate resolution should differ depending on the camera being tested. There was some discussion about this and the exact details of how cameras do this, with Paul (from Apple) pointing out that cameras which measure white balance take that into account and convert the colours differently, so it might not only depend on the hardware, but also very from shot to shot. This needs to be investigated further, so discussion will take place offline outside this meeting.

The next session was about characterising depth camera measurements. This is still in the early development stages, with some basic performance metrics being worked on and tested. The presentation went on to propose further types of measurements that could be made to characterise depth measurements. One interesting point was that some depth cameras produce point clouds while others produce depth maps, and there’s no easy or direct way to compare these two, so there has to be some consideration of how to measure both types with cross-consistency. And another is that it’s difficult to align a depth image for quantitative measurement of resolution because the spatial resolution is often so low that any alignment markers are lost and even with a symmetrical circular target object, the resolution is so low that it’s difficult to locate the centre of the pattern.

The rest of the day was devoted to high dynamic range (HDR) imaging topics. First was a “best practices” discussion for topics related to how to handle and process HDR image files – more like a list of guidelines and recipes than definitional standards. Then was a session on the standardisation of HDR image file format, and then definition of a gain map for conversion to SDR and another representations. And finally a session on HDR camera readouts to enable shooting HDR with quantitative exposure and dynamic range indicators on the camera display.

In between we broke for lunch. I went with Atsushi-san again, and this time he said he’d remembered a ramen place we could go to, since I mentioned ramen yesterday but we ended up going go to a soba/udon place instead. He led us across Tamachi Station to the street on the other side, out of Shibaura and into Shiba. Here he said there was a building with several restaurants inside, including a good ramen place he’d eaten at last year. However when we arrived, the building wasn’t there! It was just a fenced-off hole in the ground, with heavy vehicles ready for a new construction. So we crossed the main road and Atsushi suggested we try a narrow street lined with restaurants. We found a small ramen place with a dozen tightly spaced stools facing the counter and two guys cooking behind it, called らーめん もとまる (Ramen Motomaru).

There was (surprisingly) no queue, so we used the machine at the front to order tonkotsu ramen. We had to specify if we wanted the noodles hard, medium, or soft, and I chose hard.

The hot ramen was delivered just a few minutes later, with a whole soft-boiled egg which I had to cut in half with chopsticks. There was a slice of pork and also small chunks of pork belly in the broth with the noodles, and two sheets of nori.

I added some kimchee from a condiment container. The whole thing was really good and very filling. Atsushi said that here you could get a noodle refill for free if you were still hungry, but I definitely didn’t need any more. After eating and swapping stories we headed back to the meeting for the afternoon session.

The meeting closed for the day at 17:30, and I walked back to the hotel in the twilight. The day was warmer than it has been the past few days, and didn’t feel too bad with a brisk walk. My co-travellers had returned on the shinkansen from Odawara after their Mount Fuji tour and were having a coffee at Blue Bottle when I messaged that I was about to leave the meeting. They spent some time browsing the shops in the hotel lobby area before coming up, so I actually beat them back to the room.

My in-laws decided to do their own thing together for dinner, leaving me and my wife to share a dinner by ourselves. I suggested we walk over to Gotanda, where there appear to be dozens of restaurants according to Google Maps. It was an easy 15 minute walk through areas we hadn’t explored before. Since randomly finding vegetarian Japanese for is next to impossible, we decided to try the Trattoria Arietta, which was one of the first places we came across. It looked very nice and had great reviews, and Italian is reliable for vegetarian options.

We entered and they had a table free in what could be used as a private room, but currently split between a party of four and us. The ambience was nice, with framed photos of Italian sights in black and white on one wall, and colour photos of the Amalfi coast on another. The menu was handwritten in Japanese and English and our waiter, a keen young man, spoke in halting English. The specials blackboard was only in Japanese, but he explained it in English for us. We ordered an insalata caprese as an appetiser, then my wife got the vegetable risotto while I chose the special second dish, which was braised beef cheeks in a red wine sauce. We also ordered a side of roasted vegetables, which the waiter recommended, although I’d already decided on them before he mentioned them. He brought a complimentary bread bowl, with two chunks of focaccia plus two thick slices of baguette.

Everything was delicious, and we washed it down with glasses of excellent red wine, first trying a medium-bodied red from Jura in France, and then a more robust Italian Montepulciano. One oddity was they brought the vegetables out after the salad, and our main dishes were nowhere to be seen. So we ate the vegetables, and the mains only appeared once we’d finished. The beef cheeks were truly excellent, falling apart with a fork they were so tender. My wife said the risotto was great too. The waiter asked if we wanted dessert as he cleared our plates, and we said yes. He reappeared with a large platter with six different mini-desserts on it and described them for us: pannacotta, tiramisu, a polenta cake, home made chocolates, cassata, and another type of gelato. Both of us thought that this was a sharing dessert platter that he’d automatically assumed we wanted when we said we’d have dessert, and were a bit disappointed when he explained further this was the menu and we were to choose desserts from the selection. We chose the pannacotta and cassata, and he took the delicious looking platter away. The actual desserts arrived, larger portions than on the menu display, and were both amazingly good.

It was a really delicious meal and good experience all round. The three men and one woman, dressed in business attire, at the table next to us appeared to be having a set menu banquet as they all had identical dishes in several courses, and were still having their dessert by the time we left. My wife gave our waiter a sticker of a surfing koala from her supply of gifts to give to helpful people, and he was delightfully surprised as he accepted it.

We walked back to our hotel via a slightly different route to see more of the neighbourhood. The area between Shinagawa Station and Gotanda was very quiet, with narrow streets and small houses. Some of the homes were very fancy and expensive looking, some in western architectural styles that didn’t look Japanese at all. It was also very hilly – we had to go up and down two quite steep hills, using steps that connected the roads. Back at the hotel, we retired for the night.