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Wednesday 30 July 2014

Tokyo

Last week I made a quick trip back to Tokyo - because who knows when I'll next be able to pay £30, jump on a bus, and be in Tokyo by morning?

The first day, I stopped by a couple of art galleries and then headed to Tokyo Tower to meet up with some friends. It's not the biggest tower in Tokyo any more, but I think it might just be the prettiest.

 From the viewing platform you can see this road, which my friend says is supposed to look like a reflection of the tower.
 The inside was pretty stunning too, incidentally.
 The next day I went to the Kyu Shiba Rikyu Garden, the garden of a feudal lord that's been preserved since the Edo Period. I was hoping that it would be a relaxing little stroll, but the ridiculous heat meant that I needed an extra sit down in a cafe afterwards too... It is a very pretty garden, anyway

 I'm not sure the garden's designer would have considered how well skyscrapers would reflect in the pond, but here you go.
 While I was in the area I also paid a visit to the Advertising Museum, which was super cool and also free. It has the history of Japanese advertising with a wall of typical products from each decade up til now, and the special exhibition is the winners of this year's prizes in some kind of advertising industry awards. They were really fun to see too!

For the last evening I headed to Shibuya for one of the highlights of my trip - the Rilakkuma Cafe!
Decorations in the shopping district:
The whole Tower Records Cafe has a nice feel to it. (With Rilakkuma bunting!)
 Rilakkuma curry.
 Rilakkuma milky coffee.

Rilakkuma everything!

... it was pretty fabulous.

And if you want to go, it's only around until about halfway through August!

Since Tokyo, I have been crazy busy clearing my room. I move out of my dormitory this afternoon, so you have to clean every corner, every mirror, hide every tea stain... (actually I didn't leave any stains, though when I moved the bed to hoover underneath it I found a couple of patches of what I hope was just coffee left by the previous inhabitant...) I also had to run down halfway through writing this to send my boxes home with the post office guy - it's really nice that they come to pick up heavy boxes for free. So now that's done, and all that's left is me and my airplane luggage! I guess it'll be a bit of a struggle to move it to a hostel and then to the airport, but given how hectic the last couple of days have been I'm actually quite grateful that I'm moving out of here before I have to start dealing with moving out of Japan.

I think I'll write one more post on this blog - I should be up to a lot of fun touristy stuff in the next couple of days. Then it's back to the UK!

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