Day 8: Final Full Day and Harajuku

Today, will be our last full day in Japan and we first start off in Kyoto. Our itinerary had us to take the bullet train back to Tokyo to be in town by 1:30 pm but we decided to reserve an earlier train to get back around 11:30 am to spend more time there. Here we are waiting for the shinkansen to arrive to take us back to Shinagawa Station in Tokyo:

We took the Hikari 512 back to Tokyo, here’s what one of the electronic train arrival boards looks like at a station. They change between japanese and english:

And lastly, looking outside the train station in Kyoto you can get a slight feel for the enormity of the rail system, but only just in this photo:

The day before we left Kyoto we arranged to have our luggage forwarded to our hotel in Tokyo. This is the second time we made use of this service, the first being when we left Tokyo for Miyajima. However, that time we sent our luggage to our hotel in Kyoto and only packed backpacks for Miyajima and Hiroshima. If you ever visit Japan, definitely make use of this service, just ask your hotel how to do it it will simplify your travels greatly.

Here’s another video of the countryside while riding the shinkansen:

Once we arrived in Tokyo (Shinagawa Station), we headed to lunch. We found a nice restaurant in a pleasant breezeway between large buildings and about 3 minutes from our hotel. Here we had a cream corn soup that was really really good. We also had japanese hamburgers for the first time, which was more like a steak/burger mix on only one bun (bottom bun) and topped with onions and peppers. It was really really good. We chased the burger with some tea. We burnt a little time here before moving on to our hotel to check in and drop off our backpacks and camera bag. Today being our last day I decided to travel light so I left the camera behind and only used my cell phone.

The night before we left Kyoto we planned to see Harajuku, which we missed during our first part of our trip in Tokyo and then we planned to head back to Shibuya and Akihabara. We went back to Shibuya because as I mentioned before I wanted something cool to wear from Japan and there was the trendy 109Men’s store there. We went back to Akihabara to play some arcade games in the multi-floor arcades there. Akihabara was also chosen because I had one more souvenir to get for my dad and I saw it there in Yodobashi-Akiba.

Harajuku is a shopping area in Tokyo. It has the more teen/high school area on the famous Takeshita Dori (dori = street). It’s also the scene for crazy dressers from the maids, to the lolitas to the super kawaii girls, although we read they are mostly there on the weekends so we didn’t really see them out and about. We did see some maids, but more so in Akihabara as I think the maid cafes are there. Here’s a view looking down Takeshita Dori:

Walking down the street we finally came across purikura (picture booth). Apparently they are popular in Japan, but more so for teen girls. We decided we had to do it. We went down the stairs into the purikura place which was filled with many purikura units. There was zero english in there so we had to creep on some people to figure out what the heck to do. The first time we did it our pictures got overwritten by these girls after us so we had to pay again, but at least we knew what to do this time plus we got better pictures this time around. First, you pay then select the photo set you want, they are different themes. All catering to cutesy things. We did the animal set, but only one picture had animal ears put on us. After you select the theme you can pick the background for each picture, we figured this out after we selected the same background for each picture since we couldn’t read the screen. Once you make your selections you move into the booth and take the pictures. After the pictures are taken you moved to the booth next to the photo part where you can edit the pictures by adding text, pre-made pictures and texts. Oh, and remember how I said it was for teen girls? Well the pictures give you an anime appearance, large head, large eyes and… lipstick. So if my lips appear… you know red or pink, that’s why. Here’s our purikura strip:

We had a lot of fun with this so it was worth the ¥400 ($4) ¥800 ($8) due to the retake.

Afterward we continued walking down Takeshita Dori and turned onto Omotesando. This street is known for the more mature fashion scene having a ton of stores for the largest designers in the world. Here’s a picture down the street, you will see straight up the picture on the sidewalk is really just a mass of people. This area was absolutely crowded like none other.

We walked down a few side streets winding up at this really cool vintage clothing store called G2?. The question mark is part of the store’s name. You walk up stairs to get in and it was all second hand clothes from the 50s to 80s. The store was playing old 50s rock-n-roll too. It was a lot of fun looking at all the outfits there and they had some really cool old pins and was funny looking at a lot of american items here from the olden days. Oh and the price tags were on playing cards of nude girls form the 70s I’d guess. You probably won’t find something like that in the US. Sorry no pics…

After that we headed back to the station and stopped to get a crepe. Here are some of the options we could choose from:

We got a chocolate ice cream, with custard, strawberries and whipped cream crepe. It was huge and tasty. In the picture above it is the one second row from the top and fourth from the right. It’s symbol is an “X” for only ¥600 ($6).. Here’s a brief video of the crepe shop, they were playing old 40s and 50s music outside of it:

Next we jumped on the train back to Shibuya. We made the Shibuya crossing again, but this time with a lot less traffic and we went into the 109Men’s department store, which is a multilevel store with 3 – 6 shops per floor I’d say. On the top floor we found a shop called Wild Party. Here I saw it. This sweet black blazer. The guy working the shop saw me looking at it so tried to help guess my size since they were in centimeters and we don’t use those sizings in the States. He guess right on the first go and it fit perfectly. With a quick look to Sara for approval she gave the thumbs up. While trying it on, the guy had asked us where we were from and we told him the US and from Florida, he seemed to know of it and he did a quick laugh and I told him I wanted the jacket. He motioned for the cash register and I then asked, “kurejitto kado wa tsukaemaus ka?” which means, “do you take credit cards?” He said yes, and I only asked because Japan is primarily a cash country, but I didn’t have enough yen on me anymore as we were trying to deplete our yen funds before heading back to the States and we wanted to play some arcade games and still had to have dinner so we couldn’t spare the last of our yen just yet. After he wrapped up the jacket and walked us out of the store bowing as he handed me the bag we said goodbye and headed back to the train station for Akihabara.

We got to Akihabara around dinner time and the train was once again getting super packed due to the rush hour crowds. Departing the train station we made it to an arcade and found, several floors up, this game that was like a Mech Assault game where you opened a door to walk in and the game was projected all around you. Inside was a single seat to sit on and two control sticks to move and fire your weapons, you were sitting in the cockpit of the mech. On the floor were maybe 12-15 of these games and they linked together so you were playing with and against the other people in the room. If the teams weren’t balanced then NPCs were added to the teams. Here’s a video of Sara playing the game:

This is not my video below, but it shows the outside of the game:

We left the arcade for Yodobashi Akiba and on the way we stopped in a Book Off. I read that they carry old video games there. One site claimed it’s where old consoles good to die. Well said my blogging friend, well said. Here they had games of all kinds including some from Super Famicoms, which are the japanese versions of Super Nintendo. Here are some Sega consoles. I was pleased to find a Dreamcast here what memories that system brings back and especially since it was such a bust system:

We looked for the new Final Fantasy XV to see if it came out yet but the release date isn’t until November. It would’ve been real nice to pick up the japanese version prior to the american release. Another time, or maybe just order it online…

We then left for Yodobashi Akiba and there I found what I was looking for for my dad, can’t say here as he’s reading the blog too and I want to give it to him first. We then went to the food court, which was actually comprised of really good restaurants. We went to one where you can eat all you want and you cook your meal on the table in a bowl with water, that you then add different sauces to the food and another we cooked in a brown sauce, but I’ll have to ask Sara what its name was again. I can’t remember its name and she’s asleep at the moment. Nevertheless it was really good, we had beef and pork and little white mushrooms, various vegetables, tofu, udon and bean sprouts. The meal was awesome and we ate a ton. Then we topped it all off with some chocolate and strawberry ice cream. It was a really good night to end our trip with.

We headed back to our hotel by train where we recapped our trip and now having completed everything we went through our favorite things about Japan, what we will miss, what we won’t miss and many other topics. I will be making a post covering these topics don’t you fret.

After she fell asleep I stayed up working on the blog some and watching the night life outside of our window. We overlooked the Shinagawa Station which would be our way back to Narita Airport in the morning. I was watching the coming and going of the trains and was amazed at how long each train really is. Looking out of our hotel window gave me the first view of the trains from afar, which provided the right vantage point to see the entire train for once. Not only that, but from the window it was easy to see the punctuality of the trains and the frequency of their arrivals and departures. In this video clip below you can see the trains from our view coming and going from Shinagawa Station:

Lastly, here are some pictures from the hotel room too during the day and at night, they aren’t the best quality, but you can get a feel for what we were looking at:

Well after watching the trains a good while, they were pretty mesmerizing I must say, I drank another chocolate milk and finally went to bed. We woke up the next morning at 8:00am to get packed and have breakfast before heading to the station for the Narita Express back to Narita Airport. Our hotel provided tickets for the complimentary breakfast so we went to one of the restaurants called Cafe Restaurant 24 here is what they served:

They even served a mild chicken broth in a champagne flute. After breakfast we headed back to the hotel room to get our bags, checkout and head over to the station. On our way out of the hotel room we had to part ways with our trusty and loyal umbrellas that guarded us from many showers while in Japan. For the ¥800 ($8) we spent on them, they were well worth it and much needed. They played such a pivotal role in the trip that I got a picture of them where we left them in Tokyo:

For those of you who might want to ask, “why didn’t we bring them home?”, well the answer is we didn’t have any room to fit them in our cases. Yes, I felt like we betrayed them. After closing up the room we checked out and walked over to the train station, but not before stopping at the 7-eleven on the way to down one last chocolate milk 🙂

We then got to the station well before the Narita Express arrived and I got this picture of the platform:

The train eventually showed up and took us back to the airport, which was a 1.5 hour ride. At the airport we checked in and got lunch, one last round of eel over rice for the both of us as well as meron Fanta (meron being the transliteration of melon in katakana). I wish they sold it here, but fortunately it looks like it can be bought online too. I highly recommend it. We drank it a few times on the trip. It has a nice bright toxic green color too, you can see it here:

And that picture is the last picture we took in Japan. We waited at the airport until 6:50pm to depart as our flight was pushed back a bit. It took us almost exactly 24 hours from leaving our hotel to arriving back at our apartment in Tampa.

Before I close up the trip in the next paragraph, I just wanted to note there is more to come to this blog yet. I have a few more entries I want to make about our experience and a lot more pictures to put up too. I will be adding the pictures into galleries on the Portfolio tab, so be sure to check back over the next few weeks or even a month or two, as I said there’re a lot of pictures I want to share still. Now I will close out the blog on the day-by-day entries.

Our trip to Japan was one for the books. We experienced absolutely everything we could in just 8 days and we were long ready to return before even the third day was over. We are already planning a trip back in a couple of years as Japan has so much more to explore and we can’t wait to get back there. We are looking for japanese classes in the area because we felt interacting with the japanese people was one of the highlights of the trip and we would like to be able to talk even more so with them. We made a lot of memories on our trip there and plan to make more in the future, but one thing is for sure, Sara and I will never forget our first time in Japan.

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