A Plan

[owlectomy]

This is all very contingent, and especially contingent on me bouncing back relatively quickly from jet lag (I've had bad experiences, and I've had experiences of falling down dead for a four-hour nap in the middle of the day and then being fine. We'll see.) And none of it needs to happen on a specific day except the Ghibli museum, because I've got tickets for that.

-Ueno Park at daybreak, if my jetlag wakes me up early, as I expect -- my hotel is right by there.
-Tomioka silk filature, followed by onsen in Maebashi.
-The hike in Kamakura to the large Buddha, possibly followed by wandering around Kamakura.
-Takarazuka, if I can manage to get tickets; the Tokyo one more likely than the Osaka one.
-Ghibli museum
-Wandering around the shitamachi areas of Tokyo, especially the used bookstores around Ochanomizu
-Wandering around Shinjuku, Harajuku, Ikebukuro, Shibuya, hoping to see the crowds of fashionable people around Harajuku on Sunday, and also eating crepes.

I want this to be a vacation and not a forced march of tourism, so I'm prepared to cancel any of those in favor of lying in bed watching the Japanese "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" if I get tired or stressy. (Except going to Tomioka, since I am ostensibly going for research purposes.)

Comments

[owldaughter.livejournal.com]

GHIBLI MUSEUM!

That is all.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I'm usually okay with flying west, if I don't sleep for the last 8 hours of the plane ride (well, not that I can these days). It just turns me into Super!Morning!Lark! which is sooo weird. haha. But kinda productive in some ways.

I don't think you need MORE stuff to do, but here are my Tokyo tags: http://delicious.com/wintersweet/tokyo
Some of them are even useful. And I endorse the lying around if needed bit. I'm a "run around and see everything!!!" type when I manage to get abroad, but I think we spent a whole day in our ryokan once because we needed it. Sometimes you do.

Have fun!!! (Research, eh??? :D Cool!)

If you suddenly need anything, I have a very good friend living in Yokohama who just moved back from the US and doesn't have a job yet and whose keitai e-mail I have. You probably know people there too, but just in case...Well, I'm half-asleep, but you get the idea.

[littlebutfierce]

Oooh oooh! You could try this to see if it works for avoiding jet lag? Though I don't know if I'd ever be able to try it, b/c on long flights being able to eat is a small pleasant break in monotony!

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try that -- it is possibly the only idea I've seen online for avoiding jet lag that's not pretty silly! My flight gets in around 5:00 pm Tokyo time, so I think I'll have to fast before the flight and then I can eat on the plane when it's night in NY and morning in Tokyo.