Feb 1, 2019

Japan 2019 - Day 15


We didn’t start early today (something about Tokyo time) . Michael didn’t get back to the hotel until about 3am after they’d missed the last train home (About 12:15am which is surprising given the late night activity. They were within walking distance so it wasn’t too bad – it just meant they stopped for a couple of extra drinks along the way). No-one else seemed to be in a rush and given Caroline, Thomas, Emily and I hadn’t reached the hotel until about 12:30am I wasn’t about to push too hard.

Having missed Itoya the day before, that became our first destination ahead of a visit to the Samurai Museum and a trip to Shibuya to have another look at the scramble crossing and finally, a trip back past one of the Pokémon centres so that Emily could pick up a shoulder-riding Evie that she’d seen in the first two that we’d visited but that hadn’t been in the third.

Along the way I stopped and picked up some Whiskey and saw this delightfully narrow building, its size standing out due to the absence of its neighbour to the right.



Itoya was as amazing the second time around as it was the first, though having seen it before we didn’t spend quite as much time sifting through the floors as we did last trip. We picked up some pens and paper and the like and then headed for the Samurai museum.


 When we got off the train and started navigating to the museum we started to wonder whether we’d managed to end up in completely the wrong area. More than any other part of Tokyo we’d been to, it screamed entertainment district, by which I mean pubs and clubs and the like. Sure enough though, the Museum was nestled within the district. We managed to walk in 10 minutes before a free guided tour and I have to say, having that tour presented in English helped make it one of the best cultural experiences we’ve had in Japan. We learned a lot about the Shogun era of Japan and saw a really cool collection of both authentic and replica Samurai armour and weapons. I have a lot of photos, but there's no way I will put them all here!




 

At the end of the tour there was a short katana wielding demonstration which while a bit on the try hard side of the scale, was still fun to watch.







Our next stop was Shibuya where Thomas wanted to get a time-lapse of the scramble crossing from the Starbucks that over-looks it. We ordered hot chocolates, watched the crossing for a bit and arranged to again catch up with the Telfords for dinner.

Dinner turned out to be a typically Temby Tokyo experience that we shared with the Telfords. Given it was our last night in the country there was a desire to find something authentically Japanese, but the options we were finding either were going to struggle to fit us all, or weren’t quite what we were looking for. In the end we split the party and ate at a more Chinese style restaurant than Japanese, but we had at least sated our hunger.

Michael and Thomas headed off with Max to drink, play Pachinko and try some claw games. Sam, Emily, Caroline and I had a stab at making it to the nearest Pokémon centre to acquire the elusive shoulder-riding Evie.

Google told us it was 20 minutes away when the store closed in 21 minutes. With an ever-increasingly nervous Emily, we rode the train to the stop and decided to send the two young ones ahead given they’re capable of running. Caroline and I walked as quickly as we could and made it to the store to find that it was barricaded off. We talked our way through by way of telling the girl that we thought our kids were inside. Turns out they weren’t, so we asked about the Evie only to be told that they’d sold out.

When we met up with Emily and Sam they’d taken a wrong turn and hadn’t even made it into the store. There was a little bit of devastation on Emily’s part as we rode the train back to our hotel.

There was but one thing left for the night. Emily wanted a go at a claw machine. In the times that we’d been previously she’d only had two turns at the controls and given the way her brothers had talked the whole thing up, she really wanted to win something herself. So being the sucker Dad that I am, I took her in to Akihabara to try and win something.

We toured two places before deciding to go to the first one where we’d been so nicely treated the day before. With a combination of cash, requests for assistance and perseverance, we extracted a Pokémon plushie from the machine and Emily was happy.

Caroline was super-amazing and packed ahead of our departure the following morning.

Michael’s dumpling count: 123

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