7.30 this morning! I’m in holiday mode! I didn’t even wake up during the night until after the outside light was turned off. We had a rough plan for today, but didn’t finalise things until breakfast time – and even then, we changed it as we went.

After shower, breakfast, and teeth, we bought a one-day ticket for JR – it was going to be cheaper for what we had in mind today. We caught the train to Harajuku, and took a while to get our bearings when we got off. It was a new station!

Kaoru was suffering withdrawal from “good” coffee. Whilst she’s not a big coffee drinker, she does enjoy Melbourne coffee, and has not had a decent one since we got here – even though we’ve paid AU$5+ for cups. So we tried a new place at the station. And we were on a winner! I had an iced macha latte, which was nice, but they are all much the same (apart from the Starbucks ones, which have whipped cream).

After making use of the facilities, we went to Meiji Jingu shrine, talking about how busy it is these days. When Kaoru took me there on our first date there were very few other people. We joked how, bac then, I was able to take a photograph of a young Japanese girl in her kimono. These days the locals wouldn’t want to, because every body would stop to take a photograph, and they would never get to where they are trying to get to! Whereas the mother was thrilled to have a gaijin photograph her daughter 13 years ago.

Once we had prayed, Kaoru bought a token from the shrine for Arisa – it is one for good luck in studies, as Arisa has exams next week. We completed our walk around Meiji Jingu, and then did our trek down Takeshita street, veering off at the crepe stand to go to Togo shrine. It actually wasn’t “fully” open. We were still able to pray but most of the stalls were closed. We completed our walk around Togo shrine, and back down Takeshita street to Harijuku station.

Next it was off to Akihabara.

Whilst there is no real need to go there, I still feel like I have to. Before going to Electric City though, we found a place for a massage. I had a great 30 minute massage on my feet, and then 30 minutes “all over”. I was feeling sore from walking and having shoes on all day. So this was well worth the $60. We had some takoyaki for lunch, and then walked around Akihabara.

Back at the station, we caught the train to Shinjuku, to go to Bic Camera. We wanted to check the price of various duty free alcohol. While waiting to cross the road we were greeted with an amazing digital art sign in 3D.

We looked at the duty free prices at Bic Camera, but then found it was cheaper to buy the alcohol I wanted on Amazon Prime (which Kozue can do). So we made our way back to the station, and caught the 4.00 train to Fujisawa. Our plan was to go to “our restaurant” – the one we have been going to since we were dating. We arrived at 5.00 (opening time). Kaoru walked in first, and then me. The usual lady wasn’t working there, but the guy who was usually helping out, and the owner were there. When Kaoru said “Hunter”, he responded “Aaah, Darryl Hunter!” and remembered us. And that’s why we keep coming back. Unfortunately they were very quiet, so we are hoping they don’t go out of business.

We ate a lot of food, a couple of beers, Sake, and a Kaoru had a couple of mixed drinks, so it was a very enjoyable evening. We then went to Kaoru’s old local supermarket, as that is always cheaper than Tokyo. I found a bottle of “The Nikka” – my favourite whisky. I had looked and hadn’t been able to find it anywhere else, and I remember from previous trips that this was the cheapest place I had ever seen it (usually ~$70). Now it was up to $90, and not in the impressive box it used to come in, but it went in the basket anyway. As did plenty of other food!

We had to wait about 10 minutes for the train back to Shinagawa, but luckily it wasn’t too busy so we managed to get a seat. About 35 minutes later we had arrived at Shinagawa, and walked back to our hotel to drop off the shopping. Then it was back to the supermarket next door for dessert, which we ate in our room while watching Japanese TV.