Day 14 - Tokyo - We had to post a letter

T: We'd left this day pretty much free. Originally I'd thought of a day trip to Kamakura but we decided to mooch around our regular Tokyo haunts instead and head out to Shimo-Kitazawa - another funky area just a little way out from Shibuya or Shinjuku. Then we could visit Asakusa tomorrow morning before heading to the airport. Another mistake in retrospect because we never made it to Asakusa this trip... We never made it to Shimo-Kitazawa either.

So our usual start, Lotteria breakfast, coffee at Starbucks and then we went to find the post office. We'd bought postcards at Kiyomizudera in Kyoto on the very first morning, we'd written them at Starbucks overlooking Shibuya crossing on Saturday morning but we still hadn't posted them! Found the post office easily and then we headed to Ikebukero. I wanted to show Wayne the Wave record store and the fantastic Loft at Seibu.

We split up for a while, Wayne to do some more record shopping, then went for lunch to the Japanese curry place we'd spotted at Ikebukero station. There was a "healthy" curry special and I told the waitress we were vegetarian and asked if it had no meat and she said it would be fine. Unfortunately it arrived with chunks of meat and what I had thought was tofu turned out to be a soft poached egg. So back it went. Very odd indeed.

A last shopping spree through Shinjuku. We were running out of clean clothes so, to avoid having to find a laundromat, we picked up some t-shirts at UniQlo. Then we headed to Harajuku and Kiddyland to pick up more stuff - some more Studio Ghibli toys including two fantastic windup tintoys we'd spotted on a previous trip. Then to the Oriental Bazaar. I had thought this would be high end tourist tat, but they had some really nice things and a lot of it was quite reasonably priced, such as some really lovely boxed sets of traditional Japanese bowls. I was tempted but they just wouldn't fit in our luggage.

Somehow the day just disappeared. Back to Shibuya and dinner for the last time at our noodle place on Dogenzaka.

Then we went to Three Minutes Happiness where Wayne bought a cool hat for about A$8.

We went back to Book 1st and picked up a series of amazingly cute craft handbooks - nothing like the daggy craft stuff you see in Australia. This was fresh, fun and cool - definitely no geese in bonnets. Also got a Raymond Savignac postcard calendar and some extra postcards. We'd seen fantastic Savignac posters at Kiddyland, and also at Loft in Ikebukero. Went to the Shibuya Loft and then Tokyu Hands for some final purchases.

Wandered around the Shibuya alleys, a final trip to the discount shop and then up Dogenzaka to Natural Lawson for some snacks, then back to the Fukudaya for a bath, TV and bed.

Next > Day 15 - Tokyo - Last day