Day 10 - Sunday 5th August

Before breakfast, I went for a walk exploring the northern tower of the JR station complex and then down to the concourse area near the trains. After breakfast, we paid the hotel bill so as to avoid long queues at the designated check-out time of 12 noon.

I went back to the room to catch up on my blog and photos while Suzy went to the department store that is part of the JR complex. When she came back to the room, she said I needed to come down to the shops to see the way they sell food.

It was worth a look. They have an amazing variety of foods on display - mainly sweets, desserts, biscuits and pastries. Each one is a work of art and individually wrapped.

We checked out of the hotel at noon and caught the bullet train back to Tokyo. This time, we went to Shinagawa, the station before Tokyo where we changed to a suburban train on the JR over-ground Yamanote line.

After finding the right platform at Shinagawa, we found there was a train waiting. Suzy managed to get on board with her bags but then the doors closed in my face before I could get on. I was in the process of putting my small back into the door and was lucky not to have it crushed. The station attendant was standing right beside me with his white flag and just watched. The trains in Japan leave exactly on time and don't wait for anyone.

It didn't prove to be a big problem because the next train came about 5 or 10 minutes later. Suzy was waiting for me on the platform at Shinjuku.

We'd booked another night at the same hotel we'd stayed at before in Shinjuku. They had upgraded us to a better room - a corner room on the southern end of the building with a panoramic view of the city. The hotel had been looking after two of our bags while we went to Kyoto.

At about 5:30pm, we left the hotel to catch the train to Harajuku again. The main reason we went was to stroll down the street where people dress in colourful and unusual clothes. The streets were very busy.

It looked as though it was about to rain (this would have been the first time it had rained so far on our holiday) and so we decided to go back to our hotel for dinner.