Japan 2024 - Honeymoon

My sleep is all over the place at the moment. I guess drinking and not having a sleep routine certainly doesn't help! I woke up at 6am and finally completed my blog up to-date to the sound of the rain outside. It's been a long morning already. Today we need to pack and check out as we will stay at the airport tonight before our very early flight to Ishigaki Island. I am so unbelievably excited for some sun and swimming. Normally I go swimming twice a week but I've not been for a month! Eek!

Today is our last full day in Tokyo before some well deserved island R&R. It was pouring down, but when have we let that stop us before. First stop, Akasaka Palace. We decided to just wander round the gardens, which we ok but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to visit! Next we wandered around the streets. We tried our first coffee in a can,came upon a Parsi Zoroastrian Carpet Shop and Will gave in to buying a brolly. Next we came upon the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child theatre with various portraits, a time turner and the house flags decorating the area around.

Next stop lunch with Will's colleague. As well as having a great time chatting over lunch the food was particularly delicious! We went to a small tempura restaurant with just two items on the menu. We tried both, eel and prawns. Sooo delicious! Another tick off the food bucket list. Still nattering we then went round the corner for the the slowest served coffee ever. We all ordered oat cafe lattes. The first time it took over 20 mins, but they used cows milk and then waited another 20 mins. Thankfully we weren't in a rush and just enjoyed have a catch-up with Hannah. Sadly she then had to go back to work.

Still raining we decided to jump on the subway and see two new areas Kanda and Akihabara. In Kanda I had one of the most fulfilling and wholesome experiences ever. We went to Dawn Avatar Robot Cafe. t's not just any Robot cafe... It's for those that have accessibility issues and are unable to leave their house due to both physical or mental health. So the voices are actual people behind the robots and giving them a chance to work and socialise to avoid isolation. I would absolutely love to bring this concept to the UK 🥹 So we just sat and chatted to a few of the robots, one of whom had Chronic Fatigue, while having our coffee. It was just beautiful 🥰

Next we wandered on to Akihabara which is the tech epicentre of Tokyo, we ate curry and rice, went to comic stores and watched people play on the arcades. I tried to win a mario karting Luiji but failed 3 times so Will cut me off haha

It was 8pm and we had to make our way to our hotel at the airport with an aim to be in bed for 9:30pm. We were very confident the journey would be straightforward as it was last time. Obviously it wasn't... We picked our bags up from the locker and it went downhill from there. Every minute we checked Google maps it gave a completely different route and for some reason it was taking twice as long as last time. We jumped on the first train and Will was getting very frustrated as his maps refreshed and was given a different route. Thankfully I still had mine. However, I completely doubted myself and we jumped off a stop early. Waiting for the next train on this line would then miss our connection and cause a 1 hour wait. In hindsight maybe this was the right thing to do. Instead we changed our route. This next train got us part of the way but again we needed to change. We decided to wait 25 mins at the next station but be 100% sure it was the right one. We arrived and checked in after 11pm. Exhausted and grumpy we finally got to bed after midnight with our alarms set for 4:45am.Read more