Tokyo 2009 - Part 6 (The End)

Tokyo, Day 9, Wednesday 21st October

This was our last full day in Tokyo, so it ended up being a reprise of many parts of our trip so far. We started out by going to Harajuku, as a toy Simon had bought was not functioning correctly so we had to get it swapped out for a working one. Luckily we were able to find an English speaking assistant in Kiddie Land and he carefully tested the toy and agreed it wasn't working, then got a replacement off the shelf and tested that one, and then gave it to us. We even scored a free set of extra batteries out of the deal. Although we also managed to buy several more things while we were in the store. While we were in Harajuku we also did another walk up Takeshita Street to double-check for any new amusing t-shirts but no such luck.

We didn't take any photos while we were there so here's some unrelated pictures of Simon's uncharateristic new habit of drinking small cans of hot coffee from vending machines in the mornings:

After Harajuku we headed into Tokyo station where we did a little more shopping. We then put most of our stuff into a locker in the station and went back out to the Disney Resort. First of all we headed into Tokyo DisneySea in the hope that we could go on the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" ride again but the wait time was too long (90 minutes) for our sore feet. So we did a little bit of final DisneySea shopping and then briefly headed into the Tokyo DisneySea Hotel MiraCosta to check it out. We then headed over to Disneyland park where we also found the wait times for any rides too long so we had a nice late lunch in the Blue Bayou restaurant and did some final shopping before saying a fond farewell to the Tokyo Disney Resort.

Still didn't take much in the way of pictures so here are some unrelated amusing and/or interesting signs we saw during our trip:

Sharon headed back to the hotel to start packing, while Simon headed into the Yamashiroya toy store and Yodibashi Camera store in Ueno for some final purchases. Later in the evening we headed out to Akiyoshi Yakitori for some of their excellent yakitori meat skewers and tasty sake. We were warmly greeted, especially by a few staff who recognized us. This time we took some photos:

Tokyo, Day 10, Thursday 22nd October

Our flight was 7pm so we had a bit of time to kill after checking out of our excellent hotel. We left our bags under the care of the hotel staff and caught the train to Akihabara in order to return the empty toy capsules for recycling (well maybe we also got some new ones from the capsule machines while we were at it). We then caught the train to a suburb called "Nakano" as our research on the internet had lefd us to believe there may be a store selling amusing t-shirts there. Well, we didn't manage to find any shirts but we did discover "Nakano Broadway" which is a 4 level mall containing a lot of toy and hobby shops! Luckily we didn't have enough time, packing space or money to go as crazy shopping here as we might of. We also tried some tasty treats available from a small store near the station, basically some kind of batter filled with things like red beans, chestnut creme or sweet potato. We also managed to find a bottle of the newly released Azuki (red bean) Pepsi! We haven't tried it yet

After Nakano we separated briefly - Simon took a whirlwind walk around the suburb of Shinjuku in a final attempt to find amusing t-shirts or anything else worth buying (to no avail). Sharon visited another cat cafe in Ueno that we had seen on our walk from the station to the hotel each day. It was a much larger and nicer cat cafe, with some very cute (and well looked after) cats and quite a range of cat-related merchandise!

We met back at the hotel to pick up our bags and do a final round of bowing and thankyous with the staff before heading off to the Skyliner express train to Narita airport. Simon managed to find a nice bottle of Sake duty free at the airport (which caused him to be late for boarding). The flight was ok, shorter than expected due to strong tail winds which meant we arrived 45 minutes early. Sharon had some bad leg cramps early in the flight (days of a lot of walking, sleeping on a futon and then being crammed into an airline seat can do that), and consequently managed to score two seats for herself at the back of the plane, which meant we both had more sleeping room.

Overall we had a fantastic time, glad to be back home with our cats and our western bed, but we definitely hope to visit Tokyo again!