Japan 2015! 28th February.

28th February Saturday

We got up early today to catch the 8:11 train to Shinagawa and then a Shinkansen to Toyohashi and then ANOTHER Shinkansen to Mikawaanjo. We wanted to get bento to eat on the first Shinkansen, so at Shinagawa we tried to get some nice bento. Christina bought some onigiri, but at the last minute Charles panicked and bought a weird bento box with unidentifiable food objects inside. He ate it anyway and didn't die so I guess it was food after all.

 

On the first Shinkansen we saw the best views of Fuji that we've ever seen. Wow. From all directions! Amazing. Photos below. We got off at Toyohashi to wait for the kodama Shinkansen while the extra fast Nozomi zoomed through the station a few times. The Kodama was a very short trip, just 15 minutes. When we got off, we saw Emi waiting for us at the gate! Her mum was there to pick us up but only had a very small car! Lucky we had our tiny bags!

 

At Emi's parents house were her sister, father, and nephew Riku who was only 1 when we last saw him 5 years ago! We were soon joined by Emi's brother, sister-in-law, and other nephew (Naoya, 12) and niece (Moka, 9). What a party! We all piled into multiple cars and zipped off to a "burger" restaurant, which turned out to be Japanese style burgers. Not the kind you get in between buns, these hamburgers are more like fancy rissoles. Charles had a kind of tray with many small items (including a burger) and Christina had spaghetti in tomato sauce, with a burger. When we all got up to leave, the waitress asked us to wait and brought out ten tiny ice creams in little glass bowls. Emi told us that the manager likes her mum, so whenever they come to the restaurant they get some freebies.

 

We went back to Emi's parents house and all the kids got out their 3DSs so Christina did too. Moka showed us her Mii character and Christina set hers up so that their Mii's could meet and be friends. cute! Emi had to move on to the next step of her preparation so we went back to the station and we got the next Shinkansen to Nagoya (5 minute trip).

 

We were able to check into our hotel (Nagoya Marriott) immediately, and were shown to our room by a lovely porter girl who insisted on taking our luggage for us. This hotel is pretty swish.

 

After a rest, we went out to attempt to find an ATM. We also visited several convenience stores to see which was the best one. We walked past a nice looking restaurant with hot plates at each table and decided to have an early dinner (it was 5:45). We managed to communicate in terrible Japanese with the waiter who couldn't speak English at all. We got okonomiyaki and yaki soba. Yum!

After dinner we went to Takashimaya department store which was in the same building as the hotel. We bought Emi and her husband a present and had it wrapped.

Now bed! Big day tomorrow!

 

 

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Friday 28/2/2015 - Kichijōji and Akihabara

Today we decided to tackle two trips - a tour of craft shops in Kichijōji and vintage games shops in Akihabara. We woke up early with the sun streaming into our room and saw that we had a clear view of Fuji-san! Cool! We decided that it would be easier to eat breakfast at the hotel even though it's a bit expensive (¥2400 each) but it was lovely. Christina was having a bit of trouble with pain in the morning so we tried to take things as slow and carefully as we could!

We went out to Kichijōji on the JR Chuo line from Shinjuku station which was a very quiet trip. Christina had a "craft tour of Tokyo" ebook on her iPad with a bit list of shops in Kichijōji and had decided which to go to. we walked through a lovely small shopping street to get to the first yarn shop "Avril". Avril turned out to be 100% weird crafty sort of yarn. With bobbles and sparkles and stuff. Well it might have looked nicer in the ebook! They did have a cool multi spool spinning machine and a mini loom to look at. As usual, they had some sample projects on display but the best they could come with was a knitted water bottle holder - weird.

 

Second shop was L'Musee - a button shop. We went on the wrong track a but for this one but eventually found it backtracking from Avril. It was the big button shaped sign that tipped us off! This shop was lovely but too small for Charles who hit his head on the lights and had to sidle around everything. Christina bought two sets of buttons for two blouses. The shopkeeper poured them all out of the jars and Christina had to choose exactly the ones she wanted!

Next we sat down for a coffee at Dotour and planned out our next move to a fabric shop: "Antique Fabric Pinks". Maybe this one was talked up a bit by e-book as well... It was a tiny shop completely full of vile plasticky pink prints. Gross!

After this we had one more shop to try - "hobbyra hobbyre" which is supposed to be a big chain. The one in the station department store was quite small - but we had fun looking at lots of other shops in the station.

So the e-book was a bit overly enthusiastic about the craft shops but we still had a good time in Kichijōji which is a really lovely area. We went back to the hotel for a rest with onigiri for lunch.

The afternoon plan was to visit a famous retro game shop in Akihabara called "Super Potato". Game fans aren't as good as crafters at making cute maps for their favourite shops so we got a bit confused about finding the shop. Eventually Christina said "there it is" but Charles was sure it wasn't and that it looked totally different. Anyway he had a picture of the shop saved in his phone and it turned out that Christina was totally right.

Super Potato was awesome and we both had a great time. Charles enjoyed looking at the piles of second hand consoles and Christina found lots of Animal Crossing stuff (Dōbutso no Mori). Charles walked out with an old GameBoy Advance and the Japanese version of Pokemon Leaf and Christina got an Animal Crossing tote and 3DS case. Fun! Christina decided that our Akihabara snack should be a Maid Café so she found the nearest maid spruiker in the street and we went upstairs for expensive drinks and cake! This maid café had a little stage and the girls had an anime style dance and some kind of light twirling performance? On the way out of Akihabara Charles got to look in the electronic part markets which are a lot of fun. So many plugs!

We went back to the hotel for a short rest and then headed out to dinner at Takashiyama. On the way we got our JR passes and reserved some Shinkansen tickets for tomorrow! Dinner was at a katsu restaurant. Finally we did a big `ol sweep of Tokyu Hands and got a few things including some more zebra sliding ballpoint pens and refills!

 

 

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Japan 2015! February 26th.

Today we slept in significantly because we were up so late last night. After admiring our view and showering we went downstairs to have breakfast at Starbucks. We had tea, coffee, a choc chip scone and a weird thing:

We went off to find Marui One, a department store which we remembered had some very interesting clothes last time.

There are lots of Marui shops in Shinjuku - I think we saw three - but couldn't find Marui One. We asked the Information lady in another Marui who said it had closed but many of the brands are now in Marui Annex. So we went there!

After a nice browse we went out to find a shop called Closet Child. While it was lovely, it was unfortunately super hot in there and Chrissy was starting to hurt really badly in her tummy. So we started off home. After a nice little rest we went over the road to the huge Takashimaya mall and had lunch at a restaurant on the 14th floor. Yum!

We went down a different set of escalators on the way home and saw a gigantic fabric shop! It was shockingly huge and very well organised. Each stand of fabric had a small display with swatches of all the fabric on the rack, so it was very easy to see everything. We bought some Liberty fabric and some other fabric for a shirt.

We went down a few more floors looking at everything and then wanted another rest. Back to the hotel for afternoon tea. This time Christina decided to stay and rest while Charles went out to the big camera shop!

At around 7pm we went out to dinner. We set out and walked around Shinjuku for about half an hour before deciding on a tiny ramen place. Yum! Then we popped into a Lawson convenience store for some desserts.

And lastly here are some views from our room today

 

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Japan 2015! February 25th.

Today we got up at the silly time of 5am in order to get to the canberra airport in plenty of time for our 6:45 flight. Christina's lovely parents got up early too and took us!

We had only just sat down in the boarding lounge when we were paged over the intercom. Our canberra to sydney flight had been delayed so they were putting us on the flight leaving RIGHT NOW!

So we ran and got the flight. Unfortunately we couldn't sit together but it was only a short flight and Christina managed to make a friend (as usual). It must be her face.

This meant that we were fairly early for our flight due to leave at 9:15. All went well, we got on the plane, we relaxed for about an hour, and then got off the plane again. It was broken! So it needed fixing!

We then were given a $15 food voucher each and told to wait. So we waited for 5 hours! Finally we got on the plane again and started off. Christina finished her hat she was knitting and ran out of stuff to do. Charles watched all of the X Files episodes he had.

The flight got in to Narita at about 10pm (midnight for our brains), and by the time we got our bags the Narita Express had stopped running. This meant that we had to get the regular train which took ages - like 1.5 hours! We were with a whole lot of other Australians which was nice. We got out at Shinjuku and quickly remembered the way to the hotel. There were men taking down all the winter lights on the trees so we snapped one photo before they all went.

 

We booked a nice room with a beautiful view of the city. Hopefully in the morning we might be able to see Mt Fuji!

 

 

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