Final days in Japan

On Saturday we had our only wet weather for the trip. It started raining as we returned home last night from dinner and did not stop raining until 3pm when we were shortly heading off for the airport. Luckily we'd seen most of the places we wanted to as it was bucketing down. So after checking out we took a taxi to Midtown and watched the only English-language movie that was playing - Stardust.

Then came back to the apartment, picked up the bags and headed off to the airport.

Day 8 – Friday

This morning we went to Akasuka to see the various Shinto shrines and gardens. We also wanted to see the famous Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate), which is the entrance to an old-fashioned market which has been operating for over 200 years. Beyond that is Senso-Ji shrine. Outside the shrine there is a place to check your fortune from a bamboo box of sticks. Unfortunately both Mark and I got ‘Bad Fortune’ comments. There are apparently ‘Great Fortune’, ‘Moderately Good Fortune’, ‘Good Fortune’, Moderately Bad Fortune’ and our one. After trying to enter the Hidden Garden, which was unfortunately closed we walked through the backstreets of Akasuka and found the wholesale food district and bought some fake food for home! They sure pay a lot of fake food. Most of this goes into the windows of restaurants and café’s so you know what you’re ordering. As an example, a full dish of soup with pork, prawns, noodles and vegetables might cost about 150,000 Yen ($150 AUD) or more to put together.

From there we walked to Ueno Park about 2 suburbs along, which has a huge pond which is so covered in tall lotus flowers that you can’t see the water. We found the Shitamachi Museum which was operated by volunteers. The woman at the counter offered to explain the sites to us in English. We saw examples of both the merchants’ houses and the tenement houses that would have existed since the 17^th C in Edo (Tokyo). She spent nearly 45-mins with us and we did another fortune reading and both of us got ‘Good Fortune’ readings. Then we went for a walk through the park and saw some of the other structures including a 5 level temple and various other museum buildings.

For dinner we went to Restaurant Tanga (about 10-mins from the apartment) for a ridiculously expensive Private Dining experience. We had a space that was as nig as our bedroom/ lounge room in the apartment. This would be considered very substantial and luxurious but we saw there was actually another private dining suite that was at least 3 times as big. Everything is very discreet and subtle. We had 2 waiters serving us and they spoke quite good English. Even though we ordered off the ‘a la carte’ menu (entrée, main, dessert for Mark and main, dessert for me), they still served us a palette cleanser (Japanese apple), an amuse guele (fondant of fish & potato and a shot glass of aerated potato and pumpkin mousse). After dessert they also served us 2 trays of petit fours as well, which we struggled to eat. It was all lovely food and Mark thought he’s had the best pork dish of his life. Over all, the quality was great but not as strong as Era Ora in Copenhagen which we ate at two years ago for another stupidly expensive and luxurious meal. At least this time we didn’t get the currency conversion wrong. In fact, the price came in cheaper than we thought. Although I wouldn’t know as I never saw a price, we realized as I was having coffee that my menu had no prices but Mark’s did. At the end, they handed the bill to Mark for about 5-secs under the table top and when he came back with the credit card slip, it was enclosed within a lovely little envelope which had the detailed bill in English to take home.

Even though we’d eaten and drunk more than enough (one glass of lovely French Non Vintage Champagne and a bottle of French Pinot Gris 2002), we took a taxi to Akasaka Grand Prince Hotel for a cocktail at ‘Top of Akasaka’ Cocktail lounge on the 40^th floor. We had a great view and then eventually arrived home about 12.30am and off to bed. Tomorrow’s our last day and then home.