Day 6 : Tokyo

I have planned to leave Ito's house around 9.30am after breakfast, to catch the 1 hour train back to Tokyo. I have planned to visit Asakusa's sensoji, Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Hachiko statue at Shibuya, Imperial Palace and of course shopping at the department stores at Shinjuku and Ikebukuro.

We woke up around 7.30am. Ito's wife prepared Japanese breakfast which consist of rice, miso soup and various tpyes of Japanese pickles.

So after breakfast, there was sufficient time to make our way to Sakura station.

Then we started dilly dally; the house was so comfortable, the air outside was so cold and commonsense told us to continue remain in the house.

We started chit-chatting while the kids continued with their games.

Soon it was close to noon and Ito suggested us to make a trip to the nearby Beisei Supermarket as I mentioned I would like to buy some Japanese goodies back home as souvenirs. J was more keen on Japanese electronics. This Beisei company has 2 huge buildings next to each other. One is for the electronics and the other is for grocery. What a good match; the gentlemen went to the electronics and the ladies for the grocery. What about the kids? They gladly stayed at home to play. Mind you, they can't communicate with each other very well at all. Ryouta did not seem to understand the existence of language barrier and continued to talk to Isa with his rapid Japanese. Of course Isa looked confused but that did not affect her mood to play the toys and games with Ryouta at all.

The Beisei Supermarket was huge; the section on Japanese sweets was enough to make me see stars. There were so many different types of sweets or cookies. I simply did not know what to grab. So I merely took some and put them into the shopping trolley. We went to see the pickles section. Again, it was an eye-popping experience.

The Japanese restaurant O-Kyo for lunch was in the vicinity and Ito dropped the adults before picking up the kids. The 2 families have a great lunch again.

Once at home, I asked to check for the next available time to Tokyo. We really have to leave else we would only reach Tokyo in darkness.

So a session of bye-bye, take care, see you again in Spore or Japan, domo arigato etc.

By the time we reached Touganeya Hotel in Ueno, it was about 4pm and the sky was already dark.

The walk to Asakusa Sensoji turned out to be longer than expected. Initially we even thought that we have walked the wrong direction on Asakusa dori. Soon we saw the crowd and signs pointing to Sensoji. What a relief! Else my time in Tokyo would only be in that small room in the hotel.

Sensoji looked charming in another way as compared to our last visit during the day. Despite the coldness, there were throngs of shoppers. Of course we did not miss the ningyoyaki. Freshly made ningyoyaki tasted so delicious and they simply melt in the mouth.

We were back to the hotel quite early as we need to wake up early the next day to catch the morning flight. J was busy packing the goodies bought. Packing things nicely into the luggage was really his forte. So I buy and he packs!