Day 5 – Sunday, Sacred Steps in Sumida

We started the morning with breakfast in the local bakery. James and my wife stuck to the croissants and coffee/juice combo they enjoyed. But keen to try something new, Bella went for a red-bean Anpan “roll” and I had a heart-stopping Curry-pan. Wonderful to taste, worrying for the waistline—it was perfect! 

 
Walking to Church Through a Rainy Park

After our feed, it was off exploring to see how the locals of Sumida live. From our hotel, we could have got the bus to our destination. However, I had a walking route in mind, and the family chose to get some steps in. Luckily, we could do that away from the roads too, by walking through the Oyokogawa Water Park. While it was raining that morning, the light drizzle only seemed to add to the tranquility of this peaceful, multi-purpose park.

Our destination was Tokyo Multicultural Church, which provides sermons in Japanese, English, and Chinese. We arrived a little early, and as it was now mid-morning, we crossed the road to Olinas Mall. Its golden exterior had always caught my attention when viewing Sumida by Google Maps. By Japanese standards, I imagine this is a mid-to-small mall. By UK ones, it's pretty big. But by then, my sense of scale was completely shot after spending a day in Ginza and having the Skytree Village so close by.

As you can imagine, Olinas Mall had a Starbucks—and so we made another donation to their CEO’s $93 million salary. I’m not a huge Starbucks fan, as you may tell, but being in Japan, the menu is at least different enough to interest my cynical mind. Alongside the various drinks, we had matcha berry donuts and, to be fair, they were delightful and worth trying out. The staff, however, were the best—desperately making up for our lack of ability to order coffee and cake in Japanese.

A Welcoming Church in the heart of Sumida

With our morning snack task completed, it was off to TMC. The church is located in a modern, storied building which threw off my wife, who was expecting at least a steeple or something more stereotypically church-like. However, the guidance provided by their website ensured I knew where we were going, and that we’d made it to the right place.

We walked into a warm welcome, despite dripping all over the laminated floors, having caught some more rain while dashing over from the mall. Our coats were hung as we introduced ourselves. First to some Americans, then to English-speaking Japanese and Chinese members of the congregation.

True to form, we offered the full British welcome, apologising for attending, being damp, not speaking the language etc etc. Now we were now ready to sit at the back (so as not to be of inconvenience, of course) and begin worship.

We had a wonderful time at this small but mighty church. The kids played with the locals children (funny how the language barrier isn’t an issue with playtime), while Claire and I listened to—and were moved by—a passionate sermon by Pastor Bob.

At the end of worship, new members (or visitors) were asked to introduce themselves, which I gladly did. In this multinational and multicultural church, it was nice to mention that a family in the UK had found and was praying for this mustard seed in Sumida.

And with some final notices given (some things are the same in all churches, it seems), we were invited to lunch—which we politely declined. Not wanting to be a pain, and needing to press on, we gave our farewells to our Christian cousins in Japan.

Regret 2 - We didn't get a photo at and with the Tokyo Multi-cultural Church.

Chasing Mt Fuji and the Case for Peace of Mind

After leaving the church, the plan was simple: we were going to Tokyo Station to buy our Shinkansen tickets. Yes, you can do it online, but someone was desperate to see Mt Fuji—and as Tokyo Station is a tourist destination in itself, so it didn’t seem so odd at the time.

But while we were supposed to walk from the church to Kinshicho Station, we got “stuck” in Olinas Mall. That sounds terrible, and if it were a UK shopping mall, I’d agree with you. But it did give us another flavour of how the locals live, which walking through Kinshi Park afterwards did likewise.

The train journey from Kinshicho to Tokyo Station is very quick—less than 10 minutes. I think it took us longer to walk through the station and find our platform. Tokyo Station is a really interesting building in that it has two sides. Most buildings have more than one side, you’re thinking—which I’ll concede to you—but Tokyo Station essentially has two distinct architectural styles. We exited on the Marunouchi side, which is the red brick building you’ve probably seen. It was raining pretty heavily now, so after taking some quick photos, we ran to the ticket office to buy reserved-seat Shinkansen tickets.

It was incredibly busy in the station and there was a long queue, but it moved quickly, and once again the staff were incredible. One thing you may not know is that the bullet trains are not only fast, but also very frequent. So while we couldn’t reserve seats on the Mt Fuji side of the train for our original departure time, we could do so on a train just 15 or 20 minutes later. The ticket officer apologised for this like it was a problem!

Looking at my credit card statement, the tickets (one way) from Tokyo to Kyoto cost us £264.45.

Why We Didn’t Book Online

Let’s step back. You can use online services like Klook or whatever to book—but why didn’t we? Simply put, I didn’t have the information I needed to convince Claire to buy the tickets online. Here’s what I wish I’d known:

To see Mt Fuji from the bullet train, you need to sit in seats D or E. Specifically, on both legs of the journey (Tokyo to Kyoto and Kyoto to Tokyo), those are the seats you need. I hope that helps you—or at least future me—if I go back and forget this important info.

Did we waste an afternoon just to ensure we caught a glimpse of a mountain? No. We bought peace of mind. And as any dad knows, that’s priceless. Happy wife = happy life etc etc

 
Saving the best for last and dinner at the Skytree

But it wasn’t just peace of mind. We knew we had a busy day tomorrow and so were deliberately pacing ourselves with a chilled Sunday. That being said, we still had another standout moment of our holiday—meeting up with an English friend who moved to Japan 11 years ago!

Laura and I met and became friends through a mutual love of PC gaming. In 2010, I attended a PC gaming tournament/party and, as it happens, Laura was the captain of our team. We've remained friends ever since. 

Given that the Skytree was a good destination for both Laura and my family, we met up with her in the evening and headed straight to the vast food court. Choosing Saboten restaurant gave us another opportunity to try some real Japanese dishes. They were quite large portion sizes, combined with an endless supply of shredded cabbage. Pork cutlets, rice and cabbage may not sound like a mind-blowing meal, but it was again another real Japanese treat. The kids both enjoyed their meals, though we realised they could have shared as they couldn’t finish their generous portions. 

While the dining was exquisite, seeing and catching up with Laura was the true highlight of the day. Her fluency not just in the Japanese language but in the culture as a whole was wonderful to witness and be part of. It was a real treat for the whole family to meet someone who had set out to cross the world—and made a true success of it.

After we said our goodbyes to Laura, we continued to babble away about how we would tackle the next day, energised by Laura's bold move to make a life for herself in Japan.