Another last day of vacation in Japan :( Always so bittersweet. It's always great to get away and not have to go to work, but then you start to miss your own bed and your cats (and chickens) and friends at home.
Our plan today was the same as yesterday: shop. This time it was more for souvenirs for people at home rather than for ourselves. We might have bought a thing or two for ourselves.... but the rest of it was for our friends and family and coworkers back at home!
Our main goal was to find a cheap piece of luggage. With those two figurines we went beyond our carry on limit and just went whole hog at the souvenir stores. First stop was Lalaport Fukuoka, which was a train ride and a bus ride away. Lalaport is the second place in Japan with a full-sized Gundam (the other is in Yokohama). It is also a huge mall full of fancy schmancy stores. And a Daiso ($1 store). We marveled at the Gundam and then walked around for an hour because the place we wanted to eat breakfast at in the mall wasn't open until 11 a.m. You'd think we would understand that but Japan just doesn't seem to believe in hearty breakfasts.
Breakfast, when it finally arrived, was at The Original Pancake House (which licenses the name from the American chain, but otherwise seems to have no overlap in their management or menu), who specialized in Dutch Babies and Fuwafuwa Pancakes. We both had the fluffy fuwafuwa pancakes and they were delicious! I had them in 2019 at A Happy Pancake in Yokohama but I thought these were better. Jeff thinks Happy Pancake did it better. Either way, they're more like a fluffy custard pudding than a pancake. Delicious!
Our only other stop at Lalaport was the Daiso store where we were able to get a good start on our souvenir shopping for people back at home. We weren't able to find any (cheap, affordable) luggage there. Or even the Hard Off (which had been suggested online as a place to check for cheap luggage) that was down the street from the mall. So it was back on the bus and on the train to go to the Don Quijote Nakasu. Donki has been where we've bought our souvenir suitcases in the past and they once again didn't let us down! A butt ugly, camo-patterned, hard-sided, rolling suitcase for 9900 yen was the best deal we were going to find! We also bought some more souvenirs there as well and did the tax-free checkout. Side Note: If anyone wants any of our not-gently-used luggage from previous trips, please just ask. We have too much and never use it.
We wheeled our new luggage with that day's purchases back to the hotel room and went out for linner, our last meal here :( I was feeling a sit down, cafe-like restaurant and a search for Cafe ガスト also brought up similar places (maybe owned by the same chain company?) like Peitro and Joyfull. We decided on Joyfull and found out through their fountain drink selection there's such a thing as melon Coca-Cola and it is DELICIOUS! Jeff had a parmesean hamburg steak and I had Tenshinhan, a chinese omurice with a seafood omlette over rice. It also came with a side of gyoza and karaage! YUM. We were both satisfied with our decision of Joyfull.
As another last hurrah, we stopped by Taito Station to waste some of our last yen, or ten... but we won another tiny, adorable borb, and a cute Bocchi the Rock plushie, and we did one last purikura.
We also decided to walk back to Lashingbang to see if they had anything else worthwhile in the bargain bin, but nope.
So we stopped by Family Mart for some dessert and headed back to the hotel to pack. To our credit, our souvenir suitcase isn't nearly as heavy or packed to the gills as some of our past suitcases! And I feel like I'm forgetting something big because packing my backpack wasn't really that bad....
Well...that's all from me. Jeff? Anything you have to say about our last day today? We'll write up a summary while we're on the plane, but for now, how was your last day here in Japan?
Today was a pretty good day, overall. I cut it a bit close with my budget (or, as close to a budget as I can manage), running out of money officially at a little after two PM today. I do have some change left, which somehow miraculously totals ¥777. I'll take that as a positive.
My continued trouble with Waifus continues, as it once again seems like the ones I pick in each series are the least represented in the merch aisles. What's so bad about my tastes, Japan? Why do you hate my money?
I'll save my What Would I Do Differently list for next entry, but I wanted to take a moment to talk directly to anyone reading this who might be planning a trip to Japan in the future. And this might seem like very obvious to anyone that isn't me, but it still needs to be said:
An international vacation will not fix all of your problems. It'll probably alleviate some of them, though. So it's still worth it, in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment