Monday 19th April: The end of our trip looms closer as we spent the morning taking the Shinkansen bullet train back to Tokyo. We basically checked out early in the morning, had some breakfast and went to the New Osaka station to change trains. Parting thoughts of Osaka are that if you have never been to Japan, want to experience the culture and shopping along with cheap airfares (Jetstar flies here for cheap), then this is the place to go. Its not quite as formal as Tokyo and in some ways more western in culture, but its still a nice spot to go.
The trip back was pretty interesting as the train was pretty much booked up with people. Originally there were seats available and I wanted to move to the left to ensure a strategic seating for Mt Fuji pics - but kept constantly kicked out of my seat whenever we came to a new station. Anyway, still managed to get some pretty cool pics of the most photographed mountain in the world apparently.
We got back to Tokyo at midday and changed back to the Subway to go to our hotel for the last night (Grand Prince Hotel) which was ironically just across the road from where we previously stayed (New Otani). Once we were there, we basically split up once again to complete our personal agendas (shopping, visiting any missing sites, eat whatever you want etc). Tom and Kalin had lunch together but I decided to head off first to do my rounds of shopping (gifts for the family).
My first stop was to go back to Shibuya and tracing back to the Burberry Blue shop that we visited and also to have lunch (Ramen - with a super thick soup/sauce that was done using a compression oven/boiler to extract all the pork essence out.. YUM). If you are after luxury goods, Burberry Blue is a special division of Burberry specific for the Japanese market and with specific products for Japan that is not available anywhere else. Its good to get since its made in Japan and is considerable less than the full Burberry branded stuff. Walked all the way up to Harajuku (mainly all girls wear stuff) to get to the JR station. Since I have my JR pass, all JR trains are already paid for and then took the JR train over to Akihabara across the other side of town (like 15 stops or something stupid). Took a seat and managed a nozz before getting to Akihabara for some electrical good shopping.
The next stop was Ginza to look around (as you have noticed, I have basically gone back to all the spots that were originally affected by the rain in my initial visits). Went to various shopping places including the Sony Flagship store to check out the 3D TVs (see pic) before making my way back to Akasuka for dinner and the hotel.
Dinner was particularly interesting since it was an 8 course meat with various parts of beef available. Firstly there were some entree starters including beef liver shashimi. I dont like innards - let alone liver, but I took the plunge (thinking about my hero, Bear Grylls thinking its just protein) and to my surprise, it was quite nice for something that was semi bloody, dipped in soy vinegar and had laced with traditional mustard. The next course had Ox tongue that had been wind dried for a month in a BBQ kebab style (that was pretty yummy too) before having some less exotic main meals. The trip was complete with me eating the most bizarre things! :) The end of the meal was basically a Sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured Ice cream to remind me of the pink florals around the entire Japan.
Anyhow, one more day to go and off to Hong Kong.
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