Akihabara
After the go-karts, we were back in Akihabara at noon, out of our onesies and starving. Akihabara is the electronics and anime district, with giant arcades like the big red SEGA building on the main street.
Yakiniku Like
Lunch was at Yakiniku Like, a yakiniku chain built for people eating alone (or in a hurry). Every seat at the counter has its own small smokeless grill. You order on the tablet, a set of meat, rice, soup and kimchi arrives in a couple of minutes, and you grill it yourself.
We grabbed something sweet from Cow Cow Kitchen (the Tokyo Milk Cheese Factory’s bakery) for later, and then headed back to the hotel.
The Hotel’s Big Bath
One thing we haven’t told you about APA Hotel Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower: it has a big public bath, Daiyokuden Genyo no Yu, with an open-air tub, high up in the tower. After two days of Disneyland and go-karts, we spent the late afternoon soaking.
Not bad for a hotel in the middle of Kabukicho.
One More Night in Kabukicho
For dinner, one last walk through Kabukicho, under the red Kabukicho Ichibangai arch and down Sakura-dori, all lit up.
Our last dinner in Japan was nothing fancy: a little ticket-machine shop on the corner, with katsudon (¥550) and a large tendama udon (udon with tempura bits and an egg, ¥600). Simple, fast and very Tokyo.
The Great Souvenir Layout
Every trip of ours ends the same way: the great souvenir layout. Everything we’ve bought, kept or picked up goes on the bed, gets arranged properly and gets its photo, before it all disappears into the suitcases.
Back at the hotel, before packing, we laid out everything we’d collected over the past 15 days: a whole army of little keychain charms, and every ticket we’d kept, from Christmas Day in Sapporo to the Shinkansen tickets and our Disneyland passes.
Then the hard part: fitting it all into the suitcases. The next morning, we flew home to Singapore.
And that’s the end of our Hokkaido trip, which ended up being a Hokkaido, Tohoku and Tokyo trip: snowmobiles and skiing in Niseko, Otaru, Sapporo, New Year in Hakodate, Aomori, Hirosaki, foxes, castles, Matsushima, and finally Tokyo. Thanks for coming along! The whole trip, day by day, is on our Hokkaido trip page.
Information About Yakiniku Like
Yakiniku for one: every seat has its own little smokeless grill, you order on a tablet, and the meat arrives in a couple of minutes. Fast, cheap and good.