In Tokyo... Day Three – searching for breakfast

It's 0420hrs on 17th October 2018 and I've just woken up, suddenly, after what can only be described as an aggressive, violent dream. I regained consciousness feeling aggrieved. The dream involved a row about something out in the open air, in a field in which there were some rocks and a grey concrete path running along one edge. To one side of the path a wooden fence, bushes, the backs of houses. I'm in the UK, but exactly where I don't know. There are two, possibly three, people on one side of the argument and me (and possibly somebody else) on the other. For some reason I threaten throwing rocks and a battle of sorts commences until a passer-by suggests it's unreasonable behaviour and threatens to get involved. Tensions ease and suddenly I'm in Tokyo, lying in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling anxious.

Yesterday morning when I woke up I realised I wasn't happy with the hotel's 'no breakfast' policy. Generally, I don't like 'no' policies and prefer to use the word 'yes'. Where the no breakfast policy is concerned, I wouldn't mind so much if going out for breakfast was a straightforward affair, but it isn't. Not only is there not much open at 0700hrs – just people preparing to open up shop and office workers making their way to work – but the major problem is one of language. Put bluntly, my Japanese is non-existent, which makes communication with people whose grasp of the English language is equally poor very difficult, although eventually we get there and all is well.

My hotel – where small is beautiful...

I have my principles when it comes to food and I won't eat in a McDonald's unless it's a life or death situation. However, yesterday morning, as I strode purposefully along Tokyo's Roppongi streets, I found myself inextricably drawn towards a two-storey building housing a McCafé and a conventional McDonald's on the first floor. Standing in front of the brightly-coloured menu above the servery counter, I checked out the photographs of 'the McDonald's Breakfast' – a kind of tray affair with scrambled egg, hash brown, a pork (or maybe it was beef) patty and a McMuffin with egg (something of that order). The restaurant was fairly crowded for 0700hrs and is open 24 hours.

As I stared at the menu, weighing things up in my mind, the servery assistant stared back at me wondering what my decision might be; I took a step back, signalled that I wasn't quite sure what to do and then walked over to the window where I looked down and saw Precious Coffee Moments below me. The reason I was in McDonald's and not across the road, in what is turning out to be my favourite little café, is that the café's menu is limited and I wanted something more substantial. On Monday morning, my breakfast consisted of a BLT – quite a nice BLT, but a little on the insubstantial side in terms of overall size (a bit like my hotel room).

I decided not to worry about the language barrier, throw caution to the wind and ask for a peppermint tea, which was another problem I was having. It was easy to order a mint tea in a Starbucks on Sunday afternoon, but would my request be met with frowns at Precious Coffee Moments? There was only one way to find out.

"Milk?"
"No, mint. Peppermint?"
"Milk?"

The person behind the counter frowned and pointed at photographs of cups of tea. "Milk?"

In the end I gave up. "Yes, milk," I answered.

Precious Coffee Moments – it's my favourite place...

I was handed a small plastic tray, quite a dainty plastic tray as it happened, imitation wood, but obviously plastic, possibly Melamine, and on the tray was a white cup and saucer, a small receptacle for the discarded tea bag and a wrapped tissue. The tea was very milky. So milky that I figured it was a kind of latte in the world of tea, the 'tea equivalent' if such a thing exists. I wasn't 100% sure of what to expect in terms of the taste experience, although I had a pretty good idea. In short, I wasn't impressed and with nothing else to do – no newspapers to read – I opened a notebook and started to write a version of what you're reading now. I was working on the basis that if anybody looked over my shoulder at what I was writing, they wouldn't be able to decipher it.

Toast and a hard-boiled egg plus milky tea...

In addition to the tea I had ordered what I thought was buttered toast. I wasn't wrong, but the toast, a huge slab of bread about two inches thick, toasted on top with butter melting through it, was accompanied by an egg, a white egg, cold to the touch because it had come straight from the fridge. I hadn't noticed it on the photograph at the counter when I made the order. I started to wonder: was it a hard-boiled egg or was it raw? I was in Japan where culinary traditions are way different to what they are in the UK and I figured it could be a raw egg. How to find out without making a huge mess? Perhaps it was some kind of Japanese breakfast delicacy that everybody knew about except me. Tentatively, I picked up the egg and lightly tapped it on the table. The last thing I wanted was raw egg on my face and all over my shirt and trousers. How would I explain that away at the conference I was about to attend? "You'll never guess what happened" I might start off as my colleagues scrutinise the mess they see before them.

Fortunately, all was fine, it was a hard boiled egg with a wonderfully yellow yoke, but surprisingly little in the way of taste, which I put down to its refrigerated state. Had it been warm and seasoned with salt and pepper, it might have been better. Prior to cracking (and eating) the hard-boiled egg, I heard myself saying, not out loud or even barely audible: "I haven't flown 12 hours in a plane to be left with egg on my face and all over my freshly creased shirt and trousers."

My hotel not only 'doesn't do breakfast', it also dispenses with a wardrobe, offering instead two coathangers and a couple of hooks. As you might imagine, my room – make that cell – looks like a teenager's bedroom and I am quite literally living out of a suitcase and relying on the creases in my shirts falling out as I walk the short distance to the conference venue.

This time a less milky tea and plain toast...

After eating the egg and the toast I realised that I was still hungry. Don't forget that when I normally stay in a hotel, breakfast is the best meal of the day. I look forward to the servery crammed with pastries and bread rolls, the iced display of yoghurts and the colourful array of fresh fruit, not forgetting the hot food, the sausages, baked beans, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, bacon and diced and fried squares of potato. I pine at the little boxes of cereal – my hotel treat a small box of CoCo Pops or even a soup kettle full with porridge oats. I have a bowl of porridge, not the whole kettle, I hasten to add. But not today. I am limited to a hard-boiled egg and a very thick slice of buttered toast and now, perhaps, another slice of toast but without the egg. I returned to the counter and this time ordered a 'normal' black tea and, of course, the toast.

Later, I foraged for food, like a squirrel looking for the nuts he'd previously buried but had forgotten where. Fortunately conferences have tea and coffee breaks and when you're in a Grand Hyatt you can bet the snacks on offer are pretty much top shelf – chocolates, mini pastries, tiny biscuits, Madeleines, chocolate mousse. I stocked up and realised it would be a bit rich to complain (as I have done here) about Japanese breakfasts. I really can't moan, can I? People are different the world over, they have different habits, different traditions, different ways of life, and I was fortunate enough to be in their world experiencing it first hand. I figured the full English breakfast could wait for a few days – not that I eat a full English breakfast.

Where tea and coffee break snacks fill a gap...

It's 0531hrs, a full 90 minutes since I awoke baffled and aggrieved. I have two choices: go back to bed and try to sleep (for all of a couple hours) or remain awake, put on some clothes and check out what Tokyo's streets have to offer at such an ungodly hour? I think I'll crawl back to bed.

In Nice...

If I was the Camp Tramp I think I'd take advantage of the UK's membership of the European Union and move to Nice, certainly for the summer months, but only if I could still rely upon my British benefits. Yesterday I took a walk along the Promenade des Anglais. It was a cool and crisp day and the palm trees swayed gently in the breeze. The sea was blue, but I'm guessing it was very cold.

My thoughts exactly...

As the day progressed so did the weather. It was certainly much warmer than it was in the UK, but that was only to be expected considering how much further south I found myself. That said, the South of France gets a little chilly during the winter months. On Thursday night, for example, it was rainy and blustery and wet and a colleague and I took shelter in, of all places, a McDonald's. I rarely eat in McDonald's, but having only had a small chicken and bacon roll and a Mocha Iced Bun for lunch on the plane, I was in need of sustenance. A Chicken McTasty sort of did the trick, but I regretted it the moment it arrived.

Yesterday morning I walked with the same colleague to the eastern end of the bay where old people braved the wintry seas to take a dip. Apparently it does you good and to be fair to one old geezer, who we saw towelling himself dry after a bracing swim, he looked in pretty good shape. The sea was in good form too. Despite the fact that it was January, it was still blue – not the tea-with-milk-colour that characterises Britain's south coastal waters.

Up among the rocks we spotted some kind of 'camp'. Nothing major (nothing like the Calais 'jungle' – just a sleeping bag and a few blankets) and that was when I thought of the Camp Tramp. Why sit on a freezing cold Brighton beach drinking Stellas when you can do the same thing on a slightly warmer beach in Nice? Perhaps when I next see him, I'll suggest it, although I don't think the Camp Tramp is sleeping rough. I don't even think he's a tramp, just a wayward individual with a drink problem and some mental health issues. Perhaps I ought to give him a wide berth.

Looking west from the eastern end of Promenade des Anglais

While away I heard that Alan Rickman had passed away. He died aged 69 of cancer. Rickman played Severin Snape in the Harry Potter movies and he was the third well-known person from the world of entertainment (I wouldn't describe any of them as 'celebrities') to die over the last fortnight, the other two being David Bowie, also 69, and Lemmy Kilmister, who had just turned 70. All three died of cancer.

Watching those old people braving the cold seas and trying, perhaps, to hold back the years – why else would they do it, certainly not for their own entertainment – I found myself wondering whether there's any point in such behaviour. When the Grim Reaper calls, he calls, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. And then I had a frightening thought: what if you could see the Grim Reaper, perhaps walking on the beach in your direction, possibly even coming for you. Imagine the horror if you dived into a café in an attempt at losing him, only to look up moments later and see him looking straight at you through the window.

View of Nice from the Meridien Hotel's terrace....

I had a day to kill in Nice and I spent most of it wandering the streets, enjoying the view (and a cappuccino) on the roof terrace of the Meridien hotel and then lunch in Le West-End hotel, where I had spent the night. A light linguini with asparagus and a glass of Bordeaux and then another walk along the sea front that was interrupted when I passed the Hard Rock Café and found a group of work colleagues enjoying the winter sunshine and some nachos. After a glass of red wine we headed towards the main shopping area and then, after a cappuccino, we walked back to the beach where some more colleagues, wrapped up warm against the cool weather, looked out to sea and sipped pints of beer served up at a beach bar.

Room 626, Le West-End Hotel, Nice...

It was soon time for me to head to the airport and a flight to Heathrow. I took the 98 bus for six Euros rather than spend 40 Euros on a taxi and soon I was at Terminal One awaiting the 2030hrs British Airways flight home. En route I enjoyed another chicken and bacon roll and another Mocha Iced Bun. The latter was wonderful and I was tempted to ask for another one, but it would have proved slightly awkward. The French woman sitting in the aisle seat next to me had ordered a salad and a roll and bun contained in a box, but while she had eaten the salad, the roll and bun remained untouched. I feared that by asking for one more – and possibly being told that there were no more left – that she would feel obliged to offer me hers. I would, of course, refuse, but I didn't want the awkwardness so I kept my mouth shut. Another roll and bun would have made the two mini bottles of red wine I had ordered just that little bit more enjoyable.

View from room 626, Le West-End Hotel, Nice...

Once on the ground, pleasantries were exchanged between myself and those of my colleagues who had opted for the BA flight to Heathrow – the rest returned to Gatwick. I took the tube to South Kensington. On the train were two people who made me smile. First a rather rotund, bald-headed gentleman with an iPad who might have stepped out of a Dickens novel. In a jovial manner he engaged in conversation with a foreigner, somebody, no doubt, who had just arrived in the UK. I couldn't hear the conversation over the clatter of the train as it raced through the dark tunnels, but they laughed and joked like old friends, catching the attention of other, equally intrigued passengers, and that made me smile.

Nice-looking crepes, but I resisted the temptation...

Next up was a younger man with a beard who jumped on board at Baron's Court with a small bottle of vodka in one hand and a similarly-sized plastic bottle of Coke in the other. I watched as he topped up the three quarters full bottle of Coke with vodka. "Don't judge me," he said, and we both laughed.

It was so cold when I changed trains at South Kensington that I opened up my suitcase, took out a woolly jumper and put it on. I was on a late train bound for East Grinstead, but I alighted at Sanderstead and then walked home along the alleys, dragging my suitcase on wheels behind me; it made such a noise I must have disturbed the neighbours who, at around 1130hrs, must have been settling down the for night.