We still can remember the first day of this vacation like yesterday but today was already the last full day. We had so many amazing experiences that we can’t even tell which single one of them was the best one. Even today we had new experiences and we have so many things left today…

Today would be full of sunshine and we started today at 9:00 with leaving the hotel for a breakfast at the Starbucks inside Shinagawa Station, this is a very crowded one since a lot of people pass through the station on their way to work or while transferring from local transportation to the Shinkansen and vice versa. Danielle found us a place overlooking the hallway so we could watch the people from above.

After finishing our breakfast we left to the metro area to board the Yamanote line towards Ueno Station. Here we exited to get to the Ueno Zoo. The Ueno Zoo is the oldest one in Japan and was first opened in 1882. The reason why we went there was besides the Elephants their most special two Giant Panda’s called Shin Shin and Ri Ri. And where everywhere else the Japanese line up this isn’t happening in the zoo, one giant group of Japanese trying to be on the first line to take a picture, luckily for us we have our length as an advantage and we were able to get some nice pictures.

When we left the zoo we went to for lunch in the area around the Ueno Station, we found a nice sushi place where we got a place on the bar and could see how our sushi was prepared by the chef.

Having finished our latest sushi from this vacation we started looking for a Baskin-Robbins to get ice-cream. Unfortunately the one close by was not opened because it was about to be relocated in a brand new mall. And at that moment we decided to first take the metro towards Akihabara and get ice-cream there. Within less than 30 minutes we were picking our scoops at the Akihabara Baskin-Robbins before we checked out Akihabara without rain.

In Akihabara a lot of girls promote the so-called maid-cafes and cosplay-cafes dressed up in the style of the cafe and really belongs to this area. But as soon as you try to make a picture the girls turn around or put something before her face. So Danielle tried to get some girls on the picture without them noticing.

After Akihabara we went to Shinjuku to visit the Shinjuku Gyoen park, this should be a wonderful park to view Cherry Blossoms but the blooming starts very late so we tried to visit the park on the last day. Unfortunately we were not prepared good enough since we arrived at 16:15 and the park closes at 16:30, not letting people in after 16:00. Another reason to come back to Tokyo in a future trip.

From here we went back to Shinagawa to find a place to eat. We wanted to find something special with food we had before during the trip: Yakitori. After looking at the pictures/advertisements of dozens of restaurant we finally found something. We got in an elevator to the 3rd floor of a building and when the door opened we entered a restaurant. And all employees shouted “Irasshaimase” which means something like “Please come in”.

We entered the place and got seated on the bar looking at the cooks preparing the food. Or at least they would be preparing the food as soon as someone ordered. They start with the words “No English”, so far so good! 😉 But with one word question we got 2 beer, something made from beef, Yakitori from chicken and pork (don’t ask which parts), black burned chicken and Japanese dumplings. So I would say it worked out perfect in the end. This was the perfect meal to end this vacation with.

After dinner we went back to our hotel so I could write this blog and Danielle packed our suitcases.