Japan Trip 2023: Meeting up at Tokyo Skytree

The time has come for me to end the "solo" part of my trip to Japan (at least for this week) and meet up with my family. For the past couple of weeks they have been in my wife's home town visiting with her parents and relatives. We decided that I would not visit her home town this time around because of how uncomfortable the high levels of humidity are for me. On average, the humidity levels have ranged between 75% and 95% depending on day and time. Humidity levels back home in Regina are usually much lower - more like 45% during the summer and certainly way lower than this in the dead of winter. 

I struggle with how sweaty and sticky this makes my skin and clothes. I guess that I'm simply not used to it and could perhaps acclimatize over time. For now though, high humidity tends to make me miserable (unless I can crank up some air conditioning and a de-humidifier). Since my wife's family do not like air conditioning, it was better for me to stay on my own than to spend a bunch of time with them in a miserable state of mind. No point in me making everyone miserable!

Tokyo Skytree during the day

We decided to meet up at Ueno Station where my family's shinkansen train was stopping. We didn't have any problems finding each other at the central gate and then we were on our way to the Airbnb that we're staying at near the Tokyo Skytree. The Airbnb is essentially a small (very small!) two bedroom apartment. I don't believe that this is someone's actual home - it is owned and operated by a hotel company that is simply using Airbnb as their booking platform. It's a nice place but it is small - frankly a tad bit uncomfortable for a family of four.

We went for a walk over to the Skytree and took in both the amazing sight of the tower itself (at over 450 stories it dwarfs the Tokyo Tower that I visited a few days ago), looked through the mall at the base of the tower, and had some lunch. The shopping / browsing in stores is something that I could do without but is something that the family seems to love. As hunger encroached, we decided to find a place to have some lunch. Most places were packed but there was a larger venue called the "World Beer Museum" which stocked an incredible selection of brews from around the world. Their inventory was astounding.

I'm not much of a beer drinker nor a drinker at all but I decided to have a Belgian "fruit beer" along with some lunch. All in, it was pretty tasty. It was also good to be back together with the family after a couple of weeks of being alone.