Japan 2019 - Day 14

There were three key activities on the agenda for today. Pokemon, shopping and Karaoke.

There’s four main Pokémon Centres in Tokyo and we’d been to three of them before, but the kids were of course keen to check them all, particularly as there’s generally something unique to each centre. We’d decided to head to Yokohama first, but a late start to the day and the distance to travel meant that we cut it from the agenda before we were committed to the long train ride to get there.

Opening the loot from the Random Pokeballs and boxes 

Instead we went to the Nihombashi centre, then the Skytree centre before finally making our way out to the Mega Centre at Ikebukuro. Purchases were generally held over to the last one other than anything unique that might have been sought. Unfortunately some of the things that were seen at the first two weren’t available at the third one which mostly disappointed Emily. Other than acquiring Pokémon related dust collecting souvenirs we at least managed to find new coats for both Thomas and Emily which was a great relief because it cut further retail hunts from our last couple of days in the country.

We hoped to squeeze Itoya into our schedule at the end of the day and decided to meet up with the Telfords again and share that wonder with them, but needed to eat first. We ended up having Mexican because why wouldn’t you?

Unfortunately time ran away and we were unable to get to Itoya, but we did head back to the hotel to drop off our shopping ahead of the impending karaoke session.

Those that opted for karaoke, which in the case of the Tembys was everyone except Sam trekked back to Akihabara and into one of the many places dedicated to the pursuit. We were assigned our own room (as is done here) and Michael and Max began the process of deciphering how to actually cue up a song and set it in motion.

The hour passed pretty quickly and with challenge associated with finding songs to sing meant that there was lots of Taylor Swift and at least three repetitions of some Disney song from Mulan. I certainly proved that my talent does not lie in signing, something my, sister has been telling me for a very long time.

When you finish a round of karaoke in Akihabara and you have Michael in tow (and one Telford who missed the prior night’s fun) there’s really only one likely outcome – more claw machines. So that’s where we headed. It may have been pressing 11pm, but the floors of claw machines were still taking money.

What we did find though, was help. Whether it was because of how late at night it was or some other unfathomable reason, the attendant on the floor we went to was very generous with helping and repositioning stuffed Pokémon for extraction from the machines. As a result, another one joined the horde of stuff we’ll need to squeeze into our luggage.

We were eventually escorted out of the place because they were closing, and I headed for the hotel, leaving some of the younger troops to carry on drinking.