Final Day in Japan

National Art Center 

Food Court at Mitsukoshi

Ando, IsseyMiyake Design Museum

National Art Center 

Food Court 

Chicken Yokitori

Chicken Pate

Chicken Yokitori with Wasabe

Jiro Sushi

Ginza Architecture at Night

Today was our last full day in Tokyo. We leave a few minutes after midnight to return to Los Angeles. In one of the quirks of the International Date Line we get to celebrate Halloween twice. Today is the 31^st in Tokyo, we leave for the US on the 1^st but arrive in the US back on 31^st! Trick or treating twice!

We took the subway to Midtown and visited the Design Museum by our favorite architect Ando and Issey Miyaki then on to the Nation Art Center. It is a huge complex of a museum with spectacular architecture.

Back by subway to Mitsukoshi Department Store and finally back to The Four Seasons where we enjoyed a final massage before we have dinner The massage was excellent!

For dinner we went back to Birdland (which turned out to be quite close to our hotel). We knew that Birdland (which is a 2 star Michelen Rated Yorkitori restaurant was down a flight of stairs inside a subway station. What we didn’t know is that it is located directly next the famous Jiro Sushi (of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi). We peeked into the restaurant. I am glad we went back twice to Tomoki Sushi rather than eating at Jiro.  The husband wife owners are a wonderful couple and I am sure we enjoyed it more than if we had gone to Jiro. We sat next to an interesting women at Birdland, although she lives in England she works sometimes in Japan and India. She works for a publishing company. She reached into her purse and pulled out two unreleased books and gave them to us. We convinced her she must come to the Jaipur Literary Festival in January. Hopefully she does and we can meet up with her again!

After dinner we went for a very long walk in the Ginza. Every possible high-end store you can think of is represented in oversized architecturally interesting buildings that are grandly illuminated. Some of the buildings have light shows  and animation projected onto them.   We walked all over the Ginza and then back to our hotel to catch a taxi with all of our luggage to take us to Haneda Airport. Haneda is closer to downtown Tokyo then Narita, but doesn’t have the facilities as its bigger, newer brother.

Our plane left Japan at 12:05am. We got on, I had a Scotch and sleeping pill and fell directly to sleep. We both slept for about 7 hours and woke up with only 2 ½  hours till we land. It has been a great trip. We will return. If you are ever interested in travelling to Japan, I can’t recommend highly enough Esprit Travel and Nancy Craft. Every year Condi Nast Traveler ranks them # 1. They will craft a vacation that perfectly fits your desires.