(sorry for the delay in this last post, we’ve just been too depressed with our regular old non-holiday lives to muster the strength to click send on this final blog post!!!)
We navigated the bullet train and subway to find ourselves with a long walk carrying Beth’s broken bag to get to our hotel. We were staying in Ginza, a high-end shopping district in Tokyo downtown, which is also right next to the bustling fish markets. We didn’t have time to explore any of that on the first day, though, because we had a rooftop dinner booked before heading out to the robot café in Shinjuku.
The robot café is something that has to be seen to be believed – the basic idea is that a bunch of the craziest Japanese robot people got together and decided that neon lights, high-tech robots and bikini-clad women mixed with loud music rapid-fire Japanese yelled at the crowd would be the perfect entertainment experience. To be fair, they were absolutely right.
We followed up our robot café experience with a stop at a bar in the Golden Gai, a small district of tiny bars that only sit 4-8 people at a time, before heading out for our new favourite – Karaoke.
The next day we were off to a Sumo wrestling tournament where we watched a whole bunch of sweaty, fat men trying to push each other around. The experience was awesome – although it could be a little slow at times – as there is a painstaking amount of ritual bowing, salt-throwing and cleaning (roughly 5-10 minutes) for each fight – which may then only last ten seconds.
We started our penultimate day in Tokyo with a trip around the fish markets, exploring the various stalls and produce, before heading into Ginza to check out the shops – including a terryifying experience in the Abercrombie & Fitch store which bore a closer resemblance to a night club rather than a clothes shop. We dropped past the Imperial Palace before heading to Akihabara to catch up with Camilla and her boyfriend, Donovan, before heading to a Maid Café. The Maid Café experience involves paying a small cover charge to sit in a restaurant and be served by Japanese women who dress in French maid outfits and call you ‘master’ or ‘my lady’. It is strange, but it is Japan after all…
After exploring a few electronics stores in the area that Akihabara is famous for we headed home for dinner at a nice local restaurant before getting ready for the long trip home the next day. Our 194 days overseas have finally come to an end, it has been a fantastic ride with plenty of ups and downs, but unfortunately it is time to jump on the plane and say farewell to our cruisy holiday lives and settle back down in the real world.
Thanks for taking the time to read and follow our adventures!
Beth & Steve's round-the-world adventures 