Up for an early breakfast then we got a taxi to the lovely gardens we visited yesterday and slowly walked for an hour or so back to the hotel.
Then after some final packing we caught the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) back to Tokyo which took about 3 hours (vs over 6 hours if you were to drive it). It was interesting seeing industrial central Japan as it whizzed by. I suspect the route of the train was decided by the proximity to towns and real rural japan is a lot less factory-y.
A man was at the station to meet us in Tokyo. In fact it was the same man who met us at the airport when we arrived 11 days ago so it was lovely to be reunited with our oldest Japanese local.
We’re staying at an airport hotel this evening – we’re used to arriving early for flights, but 12 hours before check in is a new record for us. Our hotel is at the very end of an incredibly long corridor.
We had a wander round the terminal this evening to find some food and check out the viewing gallery and the comedy shops.
I found an electronic gadget shop, and in the back they were selling … toilet seats. And that my friend sums up our time in Japan. Crazy brilliance !
(by the way, the thing above is a slideshow/gallery thing so you can watch the pictures go by or click on the arrows to go through them – Flickr no longer needed because the amazing web man, Matt, fixed the blog. yay!)