Last day in Japan

This morning we got up quite late, about 9am. We had breakfast and tried to decide where to go. In the end we decided to go to Rippongi Hills, which wasn't very far away, then we could come back easily in the afternoon and go somewhere else in the afternoon/evening or have a rest before leaving for the airport.

We walked to Rippongi Hills, and there was some skill people is big costumes there. We walked around there a bit and saw some elephants made of plastic bottles. It was also the Tokyo International Film Festival, and there was a presentation saying about the films coming up. The one we watched the preview for looked quite rubbish and cheesy, about a boxer.

After that we tried to walk to Tokyo Midtown where there was the Suntory Art Museum (Suntory Boss has been the boss of them all since 1992). We walked quite a way there, but then realised that we were actually walking in the opposite direction (as the Japan map on the gps is very basic, it's hard to tell which way you're going on it). So we had to walk all the way back to Rippongi Hills, then walk from there in the right direction to Tokyo Midtown.

We got to Tokyo Midtown about 1pm and went into a convenience store there and bought some food. We then went to the park area next to Tokyo Midtown and ate our lunch there. One of the things I've noticed in Japan is that they don't seem to do 'normal' sized packets of crisps, only the large ones (probably like 120g compared to a normal packet of 25-30g).

After lunch we looked around Tokyo Midtown, which was just totally posh and expensive shops. The Suntory art gallery didn't seem to have anything to do with the Suntory drinks brand, looked quite rubbish, and was about 1,200 yen to look round. So we didn't go in there, but went towards the nearby train station.

Moccle wanted to go to His Master's Voice in Shibuya, so we looked at the train map, and decided that actually we should get a train from a different station that was also nearby. So we did that, and went to Shibuya, which was very busy and full of big shops, much like lots of the other shopping areas we've visited in Tokyo. We went to the hmv and looked at the DVDs/blu-rays there. They were all totally expensive, like 3,000-5,000 yen per blu-ray. The DVDs were like 3,000 yen each. There was also a 300 boxset, which was about 16,000 yen.

After looking round there for a bit, we went back to Shibuya station to get a train back to the hotel. I thought we should get the Tokyo Metro Ginza line to Shimbashi, then the Toei Subway Asakusa line from Shimbashi to Daimon, which is reasonably near the hotel, but quite a bit further away than Onarimon station. Moccle thought we should get the JR line to Meguro, and then the Toei subway Mita line from Meguro to Onarimon.

However, when we got to the station, we didn't know the name of the JR line we needed to take. We couldn't see how to get the Tokyo Metro Ginza line either though. We wanted to be as quick as possible, as it was getting near 5pm and we wanted to try and avoid rush hour. After walking round a bit we saw a sign for the Ginza line, which is orange. Then looking at the other signs, we realised that we hadn't been able to see the way to the Ginza line as we had just been looking for an orange circle (the symbol for the Tokyo Metro Ginza line), but the orange had faded on most of the signs and had gone brown.

So we got the train to Shimbashi okay, and as Shibuya is at one end of the Ginza line, there wasn't anyone on the train already and we even managed to get seats. Moccle thought that we should try walking back to the hotel from Shimbashi as it was only about a kilometre away from the hotel, and would save having to buy Toei subway tickets. But I said that we wouldn't know the way back to the hotel, and would probably get lost and walk the wrong way like we normally do. So we got the Toei subway Asakusa line from Shimbashi to Daimon (which was just the next stop), then walked back to the hotel from Daimon.

When we got back to the hotel I copied my photos across, wrote most of this blog post, and then sorted the photos and copied them across to the hard drives.

We went to bed about 9.30pm, though I didn't actually get to sleep until about 11pm.

Food
Breakfast: ½ sweet custard turnover/danish; ½ long sweet bread thing with icing on it; pastry with sweet custard and cream inside it; a few Pocky sticks; coffee.
Lunch: Packet of Beef and Tomato Taco (or something similar going by the picture on the packet) flavoured Doritos; ½ pack of chocolate biscuits like Cadbury's Animals biscuits but bigger; ½ bottle coca cola.
Dinner: Hot flavoured beef and kimchi like stuff pot noodle style thing; Choco Max ice cream; Pocki Sticks.