15 November 2012

V in Japan - Day 14

Day 14: Return to Tokyo, Shibuya & Narita

  • Date: October 26
  • Weather: Sunny & nice
  • Mood: re-energized

Saying goodbye to Kyoto

I woke up, fully re-energized. I take a shower and pack my things. While the others have more trouble with packing, I finish mine quickly (I came with a bigger suitcase just to avoid this kind of trouble, lol). I go downstairs to have another breakfast at the Zen café.

After breakfast, I go up the elevator, meeting up with the other guys (who just finished packing and are going for breakfast themselves). Since I have a few moments, I decided to take a trip to the roof, for sightseeing. There’s a nice terrace on the roof of K's House, so I took some pictures of the environment.

After that I met up with the others downstairs, we grabbed our luggage, checked out of K’s House and walked to Kyoto station. There we took the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

Back in Tokyo - Shibuya Crossing and splitting up

In Tokyo Station, we tried to find some lockers for our luggage. But we noticed all the good ones (that are big enough for our luggage) were all taken. So we walked to the north entrance to get to the luggage delivery. First we asked the personel for a drop-off at hotel Nikko (our hotel for this evening), but they said that this would take at least one day (eek, that’s not an option!). Then we asked them to store our luggage until the evening, which is not a problem (500 yen per case).

Outside of the delivery service office, we took a good look at this wing of the station. This side of the station is very pretty and worth seeing it. A lot of people were taking pictures of it (including us).

We then took the train to Shibuya to spot the famous Shibuya Crossing. Again, it’s one of the things you have to see by yourself, even with pictures it’s just not enough to pass the feeling.

We walked down one of the shopping streets and ended up splitting with each other (we all wanted to do different things on our last afternoon, so…).

I found one more anime related shop and found some Persona 4 trading cards for a friend, some sake for my brother-in-law and for my father.

Then I took the train back to Kurama station and ran to that local pub I thought I forgot my vest in an attempt to get it back (without avail, I only realized at home that I left it at a totally different place). Then I went to Akihabara to buy some original art Yugioh cards for another friend.

I met up back with the others at 5 PM at Tokyo station (exactly at 5, I’m a master of timing if public transportation works along) to get our luggage back and take the Narita express to Narita.

Narita

After arriving in Narita, we walked out of the train station and easily found a shuttle bus that took us to hotel Nikko for free (seriously, top notch organization. If you would try this in Belgium, your best luck is to try a taxi :-S).

We checked in into the hotel and dropped our stuff in our room. I took a look around and realized: this really is a good hotel and an (amazingly) good bed for our last day.

After that, we took the elevator to go to the restaurant floor, but quickly traced back our steps when we spotted the overpriced menu (yeah, this hotel was a little more luxurious than the previous ones).

Instead, we got to the Lawson's on the first floor and bought some instant noodles, beer, snacks (and breakfast for the next morning) with our last yens. We went back to our room and chilled out for the last night and had some fun as well (the leftover 1-yen coins flew all around the room).

We fell asleep after setting our timer. Tomorrow, we would return to Europe.

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