As it was our last day in Japan, we all split up to do our own things. Jamie stayed at the airbnb and had a little wander. Matt went to Akihabara. Reece went to Akihabara. Me and Chelsea went to Akihbara. And Hannah and Liam went to Akihabara. Turns out we didn’t do our own things after all.
Hannah and Liam were supposed to be going to Naruto Land at FujiQ, a big theme park near Fuji, but ended up waking up late and just heading into Tokyo instead.
Me and Chelsea wanted a lie in too and got up at 10:30 then got 2 trains to Meguro. They had a micro pig cafe that we’d booked for 1pm. We got there a bit early so had a wander through the suburb. They had a market going on with food and craft stalls lining the streets. We also found a charity shop to go in. We didn’t get anything, but it was cool to look. We also saw a Skyline and LFA.
When we got to MiPig, we had to sign a waiver to say we hadn’t got pig cholera and we wouldn’t pick up the pigs. I ordered an iced coffee which was disgusting and Chelsea said I should just let her order my coffee because she knows best. Chelsea got an apple juice which was much nicer. We also got 2 donuts that looked like pigs, but half way through eating mine I had a panic that they were meant for the pigs. I still don’t know whether they were. The pigs were on the second floor and we had to take our shoes off and put slippers on. The staff were friendly and spoke good English, I imagine they get a lot of tourists. There was an English-speaking family in there and an Asian family when we first got there but their time ended pretty quickly and we got to cuddle all of their pigs. A group of Asian girls came in after us and squealed the whole time which scared the pigs. There were 3 baby ones, 2 months old, that first all sat on my lap, then sat on Chelsea’s. They liked to stay together and all wanted to be on the top of the pile so did a lot of rummaging which Chelsea said tickled. Some of the adult pigs, a year old, were a bit rough and headbutted the babies and bit their ears so they had a few sore spots. The pigs were very well trained and had a litter tray and didn’t try to nick any of our drink or donuts. When the big pigs were being violent the staff would give them a little spank. We only booked half an hour which went pretty quickly and it was soon time to leave.
We wandered through some more stalls and charity shops and antique shops on our way back to the station to have McDonalds for lunch. We passed a few sandwich places that looked nice but we weren’t brave enough to try one. We saw an Evo wagon which is the coolest car we’ve seen all holiday! To think we wouldn’t have even seen it if Chelsea hadn’t sat down to do directions. We stopped in a Family Mart, Seven-Eleven, and Lawson’s completing the trio. Would you believe it it was the first Seven-Eleven I’d been to, even though it was our last day. I got some frozen orange juice ice cube ball things for a snack. Chelsea got spicy chilli crisps and chicken ramen crisps.
We did eventually make it to McDonald’s. It looked to be fairly busy, so we wanted to find a table and order on our phone like we did last time but they didn’t have that feature. We went back downstairs and the queue had died down and they had self-serve machines anyway, so we could take our time picking what we wanted. We both had a medium cheese chicken sandwich meal with a Coke. Chelsea said the next holiday she’s going on is to Felixstowe to find some sea glass, then America. Two very different ends of the spectrum.
We then got the train to Akihabara. We didn’t quite manage to finish a shopping centre last time so we went there first and had to queue to get on the escalator. It was so busy that when we came off people weren’t moving, but people were coming off behind us, so we had to do a bit of pushing and shoving so no-one was crushed. We got to the 9th and 10th floors but they were only gaming cards so we went all the way down again.
I then wanted to go back to a different shopping center which had a record shop, Recofan, and a camera shop. Chelsea was too tired to go in the camera shop last time, but enjoyed browsing the old film cameras this time. Chelsea found me a couple of records and the shop was tax free too so we got a bargain.
It had then got pretty late and we still needed to buy a few presents so we were stressing a little. We went to Don Quijote which is sort of like a big Poundland but more intense. It had lots of floors with everything you could need from snacks to shoes to perfume to suitcases. It was a bit overwhelming in there and we made a prompt exit.
We then went along the main Akihabara high street and went in an anime figure shop. I went down one aisle and Chelsea another. Chelsea got worried I’d left her and I found her outside the store about to have a panic but I got to her just in time.
We still hadn’t found presents so went off in the direction of Ueno where they have a bit more market souvenir stalls rather than shops. We found what we needed and headed back to Akihabara to spend the last of our yen.
We went back to the anime figure shop and Chelsea got a kawaii figure. We went in a little souvenir shop and there was an American version of Katy Hopkins yelling at this poor store owner. Katy hadn’t got 26 yen so was asking to just have the thing as it was “for a little boy”. Then she started asking if they did tax free, which they did not. Chelsea was just about to get some yen out for her but another American stepped in to sort the horrible old Karen out. He gave her the money and everyone left the store for her to have her little meltdown. We felt sorry for the store owner.
We still had a few 100 yen coins to use up so went to a couple of the capsule shops and got ones we thought were cool.
It took us quite a while to do the shopping so we were running late for getting back to the friends for dinner. Luckily they waited for us.
We got home, showed them our shopping haul, then walked to dinner.
It was a quaint traditional Japanese restaurant and they had just enough seats for us. We took a long time to read the menu as we had to Google translate it. I chose a Coke and fried chicken curry. It was a bit bland and had too many weird vegetables. I wasn’t that hungry either so only ate the chicken. Chelsea ordered hot soba noodles but ended up getting cold ones with racoon meat due to some communication difficulties. She still ate it bless her, even if it was a bit weird. We all got very loud at the end chatting about punishing kids at school due to Chelsea’s job. There was one other Japanese family in there, so we probably ruined their night out by being obnoxious tourists. They started to close the doors and shutters around us so we quickly paid and hurried out.
We stopped at Lawson’s on the way home to use the last of our Suica money. I bought a Japan Motor Show magazine. Chelsea bought a Manga. We got back to the bnb and I said I wanted a drink, so we went out again and used the last last of our money to buy a bottle of water each, then went to McDonald’s to donate our remaining 1 yen coins to charity.
We spent a good few hours packing as we’d bought far too much stuff. All of our suitcases were bursting at the seams. Everyone kept coming in and out of our room to check our progress and wonder how on earth we were going to fit it all in. We put the bins out, did some washing up, and went to bed quite late ready for our 4:30 am start tomorrow.
