I slept in until after 7! What a good sleep! Although I woke up at one point, and thought it seemed to early to be daylight. I looked at my watch and it was 12.15. The light directly outside our window is bright! Each floor of the hotel has 2 king sized rooms (one at each end), and we have one of those. But for some reason, there is a light shining upwards directly below our window.

After breakfast downstairs, and doing our teeth, we headed out for the day. We bought a one day travel pass as that was most appropriate for our plans. We started by going to a station near Asakusa, where Kaoru is registered. She needed to go there in order to prove she doesn’t live in Japan – something which is needed for her to be able to buy things duty free and take back to Australia. It’s not as simple as for most countries where a stamp in your passport proves you have left.

We then travelled one stop to Asakusa, and did a walk through there to the shrine and back. We hadn’t been to pray yet this trip. We couldn’t believe how crowded it was for a Tuesday – lots of tourists but also Japanese people.

Back at the station we travelled to the Ginza area for a sushi lunch. Kaoru ordered a don bouri, and I had a sushi platter.

It was absolutely delicious, and great watching the sushi chef making it in front of us. I think the owner is retiring, as he stood up and welcomed everybody who came in, but somebody else was making all the food, and (presumably) his wife was serving drinks / miso soup / clearing the tables / etc.

Then it was a short walk to our next adventure – Kabuki. Kabuki is traditional Japanese theatre, and something I had been thinking for a while would be interesting to see. We had booked the tickets earlier in the morning. The matinee session had 3 performances, and you can buy “good” seats for all 3, or “cheap” seats for just one – but these are on the 4th level. That was good enough for us, so we had bought tickets to the second and third sessions. Of course there were no photos allowed during the show.

I also paid the extra 1,000 yen for the English translation, which meant I had a tablet which translated the performance. It unfortunately meant I was looking at the screen too much and missed part of the show, but certainly helped with my understanding of it. The first performance (so second show) was more of the “traditional” version – dominated by a song, with short sentences used now and then. This was enjoyable, but not overly entertaining. But the final show was more of a caper comedy and extremely entertaining. It was set in the 1100’s (or thereabouts). It was quite amusing because when I could read the translation, I was reading jokes before the actors had said them. So I would have a laugh to myself, and then a bit later the audience would laugh!

After the show Kaoru decided she wanted a parfait. So we went to a place in Ginza which she knew of.

We went back to our hotel, and I had a bit of a snooze. I had fallen asleep briefly before the Kabuki, and Kaoru had dozed a bit during the it! So I wanted to rest up before the evening. About 5.20 we headed out, and caught the bus to Ni no machi to go to a soba restaurant, where we met up with Mikiko and Yoshi. We had a fantastic meal and great conversation, especially reflecting on my first trip to Japan and our experiences there – when I first met Mikiko, and then Kaoru (and they both met each other then, too).

After dinner we said our goodbyes, and caught the bus back to Shinagawa. Kaoru did a load of washing while we watched some TV.