earlier.
When we left the museum we decided we just had not seen enough buses so
far so we took another two in order to get back into the town centre, ending up
at Japan town for dinner. Now, most cities in the US seem to have
Chinatowns, but Japanese areas were something that we did not often
encounter. San Francisco's Japanese population has a strong identity
however, and has been the base of the Japanese Cultural and Community
Center of Northern California since 1973. We spent an enjoyable evening
looking round the district, although the rain forced us to limit our stroll to the
undercover malls of shops and restaurants. We had a very nice and
inexpensive meal in a small establishment, taking potluck to some extent with
what we ordered - though helped in small measure from experiences in Waga
Mama's in the UK.
One more bus (our sixth of the day) took us to Union Square to see the
Christmas decorations, largely consisting of a mammoth tree and Macys's lit
up like a giant present. En route from here to the next bus stop we did a little
window-shopping, and spotted a very exclusive store where customers were
drinking champagne, eating chocolates and being entertained by live piano
music. We decided to 'have a bit of that' and went in. We emerged about 15
minutes later slightly tipsy and having established that, yes, we could not
afford anything. A fact not overlooked by the snooty staff member to whom we
handed our glasses on the way out. They were lucky we didn’t have room in
the van to keep the glasses!
A final bus saw us within an unsafe walk from the campsite. Happily we