Last Day! 8th February

Today was our last day in Japan!! Luckily we did as much as two normal days just to wear ourselves out for the overnight flight in the evening.

I woke up early to look out the window again! I could see Mt Fuji again and also some skyscrapers in Yokohama.

After window viewing, we went downstairs... to the twentieth floor... to have breakfast. We got to sit right at the corner of the building looking over the tracks of Shinjuku station all the way south to Harajuku and Shibuya. It was so much fun watching trains that we almost forgot to eat!

After eating as much of the buffet as we could, we got all our stuff packed up and checked out, leaving our bags at the hotel. This was at about 10:15, just in time for our first appointment at Tokyu Hands which opens at 10. We took the torturous one minute walk to Tokyu Hands which was right across the tracks from our hotel. The MAIN thing I wanted to look at was Porter bags, but we also wanted to check out their toy cameras and other such things! It was fun and we spent a bunch of our remaining cash on cameras. 

Having potentially chosen a bag I wanted to buy, we moved on to our second destination, Daikanyama, which is an area near Shibuya. I wanted to go to *another* bag shop before leaving Tokyo! (thankyou for understanding, Christina...) We took the Yamanote line for free to Shibuya then changed to a private line for a short ride to Daikanyama. Lucky for us, Daikanyama is the most awesome place ever. It is super fashionable. We were there about 12, just when shops start opening, so it was a bit deserted, but the few people we saw were amazingly fashionable. Awesome. The bag shop wasn't hard to find. It's the only place where you can buy Monocle x Porter bags in Tokyo. I got to fondle all the amazing bags, but the ones I wanted were sold out :-( which is lucky because they were about $600. Wow, expensive.

Having left the bag shop we wandered around for a while oogling the cool shops. We stopped for lunch an italian style cafe named Eataly. It was delicious! I had nice coffee and nice sandwich and Christina had an amazing spherical cake and disappointing tea. Yay. I opened up my new Diana Mini camera and loaded film to take pictures!

We headed back to the station and on the way photographers were photographing a model who was modelling. Awesome.

Back at Shinjuku we quickly went back to Tokyu Hands and I bought my new bag yay. THEN we went to Marui One which was only a short walk away. I think this was the first day that Charles activities came before Lolita activities. Wow!

Chrles just got a severe tickling for that. HRRUMPH.

Marui one was fun but Christina didn't find anything good to buy that we could afford so we left. On the walk back to the station we stopped at a few places and looked around Shinjuku for the last time (for now!). 

It was easy to pick up our bags and get the station early for our 4:10 train! We spent some time on the platform watching the trains and taking fun photos. 

The Narita express was a nice trip. It was good to be on it while it was still light so that we could see the scenery. Interesting!

Checking in for our flight, we were distressed to find that we couldn't have seats together! We complained to the lady since we were very upset and luckily they upgraded us to premium economy so that we could be together! It was horrible! But it worked out ok...

The flight back was just tiring... I would have liked to sleep or relax more but they keep coming up with more activities... dinners... breakfasts.... cups of tea...  too many!

Finally we got to Sydney and got our bags through customs etc. I had assumed that you could go to some kind of desk and buy a bus ticket. This was not the case... we found the bus terminal... but there was no official people or anything...

In the end, we bought a ticket for an 8:30 Greyhound bus from their website. When it turned up, the driver didn't have our names on his sophisticated passenger tracking system... a piece of paper... eventually we got on the bus after he'd inspected the "e-ticket" on our iPhone. It was so depressing after travelling on Shinkansen for ages... Australian things suck sometimes.

Anyway, we got home quite early. Trip finished!! Until next time Japan! Mata ne?