Kyoto & Tokyo: Final Days
Mäneka
Our last day in Kyoto started with savoring our free hotel room cookies, cigars filled with matcha cream. One of the perks of staying at Noku Kyoto. Other mundane errands were going to the 7-11 to get cash and a trove of my favorite grape and cola gummy candies.
It was then time to head to the station to catch our shinkansen to Tokyo. When we booked the reserved seats we were too late to get two seats together. It later turned out this was because it was a holiday weekend in Japan, “Thanks For Your Labor Day” as the bellman at our Tokyo hotel explained.
The holiday also explained the absolute madness in Kyoto Station. Linda got very flustered and turned around many times. “I have no idea where we are. I’m just following you.”
We spent an inordinate amount of time walking to different location of Sizuya that turned out to probably be identical to the one we had been standing right in front of. 😐 The snacks we selected for the train ride were a katsu sando for Mom and two pastries for me, a matcha almond-ish croissant and a novel-sounding coffee anko cream bun. I say “almond-ish” because the top of the croissant suggested that it was filled with almond paste, but it turned out to be a custard filling. I can’t really complain though. The cream bun’s anko was coffee-flavored and I liked this combination. Plus it had the shelf-stable whipped cream that is a guilty pleasure of mine piped inside that blossomed into a cute little rosette on top.
Marunouchi Hotel is located extremely conveniently to Tokyo Station. The room we were upgraded to (very kindly by Matsubara-san) had a baby bear bed, reminiscent of the one that Kamala slept on in St. Petersburg, but a vast upgrade. We dropped our bags off and then headed out for some last ditch shopping. Destination #1 was Adidas Core Store in Shibuya, where I shocked the cashier by buying five pairs of sweatpants. This was followed by an expedition into nearby Shibuya 109 to visit Punyus. After carefully weighing the options, I got her a gift. The sales staff made sure to verify the size with me multiple times before purchase.
For dinner, inspired a hungry woman I overheard on a subway platform in Kyoto, we had yakiniku at Horumon Yakiniku in Shibuya right when it opened. We were the only ones there, thankfully, which helped us avoid getting smoked out, to use a Linda-ism. We ordered regular beef short ribs, sesame pork, vegetable platter, salad, and very fatty beef. The waitress provided some unintelligible reason as to why we had to order to the salad, but it was not bad. The fatty beef was a melt in your mouth treat. A perfect last dinner to wash down with a Suntory highball.
We also ran into some interesting vending machines. One for bananas…
and one for…assorted goods like salmon socks, fancy instant noodles, and rice?
Our flight left the following afternoon. I will add the Narita Express is much more relaxing than Friendly Airport Limousine so I recommend this option, especially if you are close by the station.
While it seems crazy to fly to Japan to see Perfume, I would do it all over again. I’m looking forward to experiencing Perfume in LA this spring!