I’ll be combining Monday and Tuesday into a single blog since they were both relatively uneventful (in comparison to most of the other days on this trip).
We started Monday with a trip to Ginza, as there’s a 12-floor UNIQLO store there that we both wanted to visit. The rest of the area was super expensive (think Dior, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, etc.) so we didn’t stick around for long, but the UNIQLO store was definitely worth visiting! I got some cheap shirts (including some Splatoon 3 collaboration shirts) and a nice pair of pants that I had bought previously in a different color. The whole place felt like it was trying to be an art exhibition while also being a store, which seemed like a product of the district it was in but it was kind of neat!
We were pretty beat after travelling to Ginza as it was a pretty far trip and the pure exhaustion from just how much we had been doing for the last three weeks was finally starting to catch up to us, so we revisited the pasta place I praised before for a mix of lunch and dinner and settled in for a night of self care. I dismissed my fear of the customs officers and broke out my switch dock so that Jessica and I could take turns playing Tears of the Kingdom on the TV in our hotel room. While I’m sure we could have dragged ourselves back out for another adventure, we were both pretty beat and I don’t regret taking a night to relax and prepare ourselves for what would come tomorrow.
We woke up a bit late on Tuesday morning and headed to Tokyo Tower for the dreaded 600-step climb to the top. I was much less excited than Jessica for the trek, but it ended up being a bit easier than I expected it to be! They had signs on the way up to question you about some fun facts about the tower, which was probably the only thing that kept me going as I got a second to breathe while Jessica translated the signs. At the top of the tower was a pretty cool view and a small shrine you could pray to, and on our way back down we stopped at some Hello Kitty themed gachapon machines and I got a picture of the statue inside the tower. Pretty cool!
We decided to stop in Ueno as we were coming back from the tower, since it was already on the way and we didn’t trust ourselves to have the energy to leave the hotel again once we were back and showered. We stopped in at a merchandise store outside of the station and picked up some miscellaneous goodies, and then went to visit Book-Off (a pretty well known secondhand store) with no luck.
After that, we took a walk through the park to find a cluster of public activities that featured two more Pokemon sewer grates (YES, I did go out of my way to find more. Don’t judge me.) and I’m REALLY surprised that we didn’t visit this area during the main portion of our trip. There were two museums and a zoo, all nestled into this absolutely gorgeous park that would have been lovely to explore compared to the other somewhat depressing museum we had visited instead. But seeing Diver City instead was worth it!
As we were heading back to Asakusa, the hunger began to kick in, and we ducked into a place that had dumplings for lunch. We ordered 12 dumplings and a large helping of rice, which also came with two fried chicken nuggets and some soup, and it cost us 820 yen in total, which was barely $3 each! I will always mourn the loss of super cheap but still good food now that I am back in America.
We finally got back to our hotel and were able to clean ourselves up and sit down and organize all of our stuff to prepare for the trip home tomorrow. It was quite the daunting task, but a necessary evil that I’m very grateful I left time for. Knowing that this was our last night in Japan made me sad, but deep in my heart I was ready to go home.