Last full day in Japan for this trip then.

It didn't start off too auspiciously but the evening more than made up for it and ended up one of our most memorable of the trip.

Read on...

Today's mission was to find a shop from which Tracey could buy a suitcase load of material samples for some nefarious purpose when we got home. Probably seat covers or something similar; it wasn't made particularly clear. Since we hadn't lucked out and found anything like Toji Market this trip (come on - lightning doesn't strike twice) Tracey was itching to get her mits on some Japanese textiles. She'd even Googled for a local shop and found something nearby. And somewhere else miles away.

Write the script. 

First though, there was the matter of breakfast. Last trip we used Jonathan's Restaurants a lot for breakfast, but we hadn't used them this time as it turned out they are a Tokyo only chain. Or so we thought...until we found two on our travels last night. Win! 

We dragged ourselves out of bed as early as seemed sensible (a bit before 9am) and speed marched to the nearest one about 3 minutes away from the hotel. Love Jonathan's for breakfast. Good choice on the menu and the unlimited drinks bar is included with the breakfast sets. So a bucket or six of coffee each along with the bacon, sausages and eggs. And of course they do Melon Soda. Yes for breakfast - don't judge me.

Had a thoroughly leisurely breakfast then...interrupted only by sporadic loud braying from the primarily American tourists in the next booth. God they were loud. Even in the UK they would have been seen as over the top but in Japan - they might as well have broken out megaphones. Nothing like working against your racial stereotype when abroad eh? Luckily they buggered off after 10 minutes and the decibel level dropped back to something civilised. The waitress did apologise but it was all fine really and we had a nice conversation prompted by the experience and my hoodie. The last remaining sliver of Tracey's soul gave up all resistance and evaporated. I'm amazed it lasted this long to be honest.

Once we were totally saturated with caffeine and sugar we began the (ultimately bloody stressful) search for Tracey's mythical material shop. 

This should not have been difficult. She had got all the information stored on her iPhone and had even sent me the link just in case her phone played up. We both banged the information into Google Maps (I know - but what other choice did we have?) and started following the directions. In bloody circles. Seriously, we must have gone round and round the block about 5 times, ducked down alleys just in case it was hidden somewhere, compared phone directions, tried the phones landscape and portrait, and generally did everything but channel our spirit guides.

Could we find it?

Could we buggery. 

Up the street we went. Back down the street we went. Round the outside of the massive shopping mall we went, all the time with the direction arrows continuing to send us in circles.

And then we sussed it. 

It was in the shopping mall we were circumnavigating. 

Swearing.

And annoyingly when we did find it (on the second floor) it wasn't what we had thought and was primarily focussed on selling large bolts of material for kimono. There were a few samples but nothing worth bothering about.

Chuntering. 

So there was nothing for it but to trek across Yokohama to the other place she'd found. You saw that coming didn't you? 

Much as we like to walk to places so you can see more of the locality, the place Tracey had found was miles away and not a sensible walk. So we trekked back to Kannai station to catch a train. 

Now, in all the time we've travelled on the train we've never actually had to buy a ticket. We used Passmo cards on the tube last year and our JR Pass covered everything else apart from the trip to Hakone and we bought reserved seats for that. This time our JR Passes had expired, I'd stupidly left the Passmo cards at home and buying new ones seemed excessive for one day. Never mind - I can do this! We rocked up to the ticket machine and although I could find the right station in Japanese I was struggling to work out the process to actually get the bloody ticket. And how did we sort this? Tracey pushed a button and out came the ticket. 

There was a sudden massive attack of deja-vu from last year’s debacle at Shinjuku Eki. Why bother learning the language? Just get Tracey to push buttons marked in a language she can't read and it'll be fine. Just as well she didn't then bang on about it for the next few hours. Oh, wait...

Not long afterwards, Captain Smug and I were standing outside Yokohama Eki having pinned our hopes on Google Maps once again and trekked miles through the underground walkways. Did it quickly and easily, and with the minimum of fuss, find the shop?

Of course not.

The area we were in was an absolute rabbit warren of staircases; it was like being trapped in Escher's "Relativity". But to be fair to Google it did keep pointing to the massive department store called Sogo that we were standing in front of/next to/underneath/near. Having learnt the cause of this aberrant behaviour earlier we rechecked the address and sure enough, our shop was inside. See? We can learn. Eventually. 

However, 20 frustrating minutes later we still couldn't find the shop itself. Sogo is massive - easily the size of Harrods or Selfridges and on multiple floors. There was an awful lot of staring at floor plans, going up escalators, wandering aimlessly about, going back down the same escalators. Etc. Rinse and repeat. Tracey was all for binning the idea but I'm a stubborn bugger and we'd come all this way. Plus there was the ticket machine incident. I was not being beaten again.

So, with generations of male Rowe ancestors shouting impotently across the gulf of years I found the main customer service desk and asked. The immaculately made up girl behind the counter was incredibly poised and polite. And then she read the hoodie and burst out laughing. Tracey, who as previously stated had no single iota of her soul left by this point, rolled her eyes and walked off. The girl then apologised (no it's fine honestly) and asked if a) I knew what it meant and b) was I really Scottish? Guilty on both counts. More laughing, which wasn't helped by me giving her my card. Sod it - why not double down? She took it, read it, pissed herself again and asked if she could keep it. Sure. But can you tell me where the bloody store is first before I die of old age? 

Five minutes and several escalator rides back up again we found the store. 

And it was just like the other one. But even more expensive and clearly aimed at a market that was not remotely us. 

Oh well. We tried. No new seat covers for us this year. 

Back downstairs and back through the underground concourse we trekked towards the line to Kannai. Which of course we couldn't find and had to wait ages while another tourist monopolised the time of every member of staff in sight. At least this time we knew how to use the machine though. Tracey didn't gloat even once*

Once back at Kannai we retraced our steps along the main shopping street (via another pet shop - more internal conflict) to Don Quiote to buy Alex a Hanko stamp for looking after our cats while we were away. A custom stamp with the Kanji for "Cat Daddy" on it from the 10 minute stamp machine seemed appropriate :-)  

Stamp duly bought, we then spend the next few hours tracking back to, and wombling around, Motomachi since although the Halloween parade had been phenomenal last night, it didn’t make the street that easy to shop. We went back to the shoe store. Tracey tried on the shoes from yesterday. And to my genuine surprise, talked herself out of them once again. That’ll be a first then!

After exhausting the possibilities of Motomachi we headed back to Chinatown (via the most indirect route I think it was possible to take!) for one last mooch. And a steamed meat bun each which we’d never had before but would definitively have again, especially if we were starving; one of these and we were stuffed!

A while later, with just about every souvenir shop in Chinatown well and truly investigated, we headed back to the hotel for a final repack of the cases before tea. Since we were really intending just to go to the place we’d spotted last night, eat, and then get an early night (5:30am taxi remember!) I left the big camera in the case and just took my phone. Wish I hadn’t…

Around 6pm it was already properly dark but I was confident that I could find the restaurant, albeit not via the shortest route as we’d not come back directly to the hotel once we found it. So; walk towards the station, find KFC, past that, find the Ticket Ramen restaurant, turn right and follow the road until we walked past it. Bit of a long way for a short cut but I figured it was better than guessing. Couldn’t we have used the GPS data from last night? Well, yes we could have…if I had noticed that the GPS data embedding had been turned off on my phone and re-enabled it. Prat.

Anyway, it all went swimmingly until the last bit where, according to our plan, we would walk easily to the place, push open the door, be welcomed in with a loud 「いらっしゃいませ」by the friendly staff and spend the next hour or so being #soblessed and #makingmemories and other arrant self-indulgent nonsense.

We couldn’t find it.

Seriously, we walked all the way to the end of the street, retraced our steps, re-retraced our steps (yes we have been doing a lot of that, well done for noticing!) but no warm glow of an お好み焼き sign presented itself. There was disappointed grumbling. We almost resigned ourselves to admitting a) that we were stupid b) we were lost and c) defeat. Almost. Ok, come one, one last re-re-retrace of our steps before we bin it for the night.

And this time we found the restaurant!

It was closed.

Not closed as in “don’t worry, you’re just a bit early, we’ll be open later” closed.

Closed as in “we are not opening at all tonight under any circumstances” closed.

Buggeration.

Instead of #makingmemories there were several minutes of #teethgrindingandmutedswearing

Going back to Jonathan’s, which we had walked past earlier, now seemed to be the best alternative since we were getting hungry and really didn’t want to be out too late. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world but it wasn’t the “special last night in Japan meal” we had planned.

We decided to head back in the direction of our hotel and see if there was anything we fancied before we gave up entirely and defaulted to Jonathan’s. Trudging along rather randomly through the dark back streets we eventually came to a main crossway and were about to head over to the other side when Sharon, our personal Lucky Pixie, chose that moment to stretch, yawn, shake herself awake and give us a firm poke in the ribs.

Something caught our eye to the left.

A bright something.

There were lights.

LOTS of lights.

And crowds.

No, sorry, CROWDS!

Being nosey sods, that was too much to ignore so we left-wheeled and quick-marched towards the brightly illuminated throngs of people.

It was a festival!

Not just any old festival either; we’d inadvertently stumbled into the local Torinoichi Festival and it was incredible! There were stalls as far as the eye could see, primarily selling food, but a bit later on there was a long bank of brightly lit stalls selling…erm…what the heck were they selling?!

Each of the dozen or so stalls were absolutely dripping with what we initially thought were wreaths but (after a bit of Googling) turned out to be bamboo rakes called 熊手 (Kumade; lit. “Bear’s Paw”) and they were decorated with, well, everything! I honestly don’t know how to describe them properly, at least, not in any sort of culturally sensitive way. Oh well, screw it, here goes…

Imagine going on a midnight raid through a toy store, a craft supplies stockist, a Christmas shop and a garden centre, taking a brief but earnest detour via a harvest festival and then spending the next hour or four getting busy with a hot glue gun and random bits of your haul, all whilst chanting “More is More” and giggling furiously. You’d then be in the right ball park.

Sorry. Like I said, not the most culturally sensitive description.

But just LOOK at them!

They were absolutely incredible, and I mean that in the literal sense. Gaudy as all hell but incredible. They ranged in size and price from ping-pong bat sized ones at around ¥1000 (about £7) up to massive edifices that you’d have needed a team of Sherpas to carry. I asked one of the stall holders how much one of these huge ones were and nearly fell over when she said ¥30000 (around £200)!

On top of the visual assault, every time anyone bought one the entire staff of the stall, accompanied by a large percentage of the surrounding crowd, broke into a loud clapping chant called 手締め (Tejime). Yes I had to look that up. Wish I’d videoed it, but it was too sporadic and standing still with a camera in the air just waiting for it to happen wasn’t really an option – it was absolutely heaving. You can see/hear it on this video but you have to imagine it at about double the volume since it was far busier when we were there and everyone was getting involved.

So – what’s all this about then? Apparently (more Googling – I do these thing so you don’t have to) they are for good luck. People, especially businesses, buy them each year and the tradition is to return the one from last year and “upgrade” it to a larger one. Since buying a smaller one wouldn’t reflect well on your business’ prospects, the trick is to start small and just get a slightly larger one each time. God knows what size you’d have to buy if your business had been around for hundreds of years – it’d probably come with its own gravity well!

Buoyed by the general atmosphere of celebration and exuberance we decided to scrap the idea of an early night and spent ages wandering through the endless food stalls both in the street and in the adjacent Yokohamabashi shopping mall, many of which were being run by local restaurants which…..wait a minute...

…so that’s why the Okonomiyaki restaurant was closed!

To be fair, given its location they’d have had zero trade since most of the local population seemed to be at the festival. Can’t blame them.

We eventually got to the end of the shopping mall and, now realising we were still starving, decided to circle back round via the quieter back streets rather than force our way back through the crowds.

And once again, Sharon the Pixie earned her keep.

We saw a sign.

It said (amongst other things) お好み焼き

We grinned. As in Aomori, we nearly tore the door off.

And our evening in 粉鉄 (Konatetu; Powder+Iron=Scrap Iron? Not sure..) was exactly what we’d hoped for earlier on. Actually it was better.

We ordered a big beer, a large (二合 = 360ml), warm sake and two of our favourite Okonomiyaki – cheese, bacon and spring onions. The waitress brought the ingredients over and asked us if we’d had it before. When we said we had she left us to it and we got to put our lesson from Aomori into practice; “make a sandwich”. And we didn’t actually make a total pig’s ear of it either. There’s video and everything to prove it!

While all this was going on we ended up chatting with a lady and her son who were sitting at the next table eating もんじゃ焼き (monjayaki – similar sort of thing but a lot “wetter”, more beansprouts and eaten with small spatulas.)

Her name was Kasue Ihara San (I wrote it down to make sure) and we had a genuinely interesting conversation, mostly in Japanese with a bit of English chucked in, about the usual topics; where we were from, where she was from (nearby), did she come here often (yep), how old her son was, where did I learn Japanese, did Tracey speak any (not really), where did she learn English, how amazing the festival was etc etc. We asked if she would mind us taking a photo of them both, with Uisuki and Daiou of course, as a souvenir of such a lovely evening.

Honestly we had a phenomenal time, fuelled by all this general bonhomie...and a few more beers and sake. After the initial disappointment of the closed restaurant, we genuinely lucked out and could not have wished for a better end to the trip. At times like this I always think of Douglas Adams and his description of Dirk Gently’s “Zen” Driving Method in "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"...

“..which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”

This was firmly “both”.

After we had finished our meal, thanked Kasue San once again and the staff for looking after us we toddled off into the night, doing our very best Cheshire Cat impersonations.

(Later note: I love the Internet sometimes! We’d been so eager to get inside the restaurant that we hadn’t actually taken a photo of it or even properly noted its name. But after bit of virtual retracing of our steps on Google Maps back in the UK I managed to find it. And since they have both a website and a Facebook page, I contacted them, thanked them once again for such a fantastic evening and asked them to show the photo to Kasue San if they ever see her. They even remembered us, although despite Tracey’s unbridled hatred of it, I’d wager the hoodie helped!)

A bit more trundling about to the temple and back through the market followed, including buying Daruma and Lucky Cats from one of the stalls, before the effects of the beer and sake finally kicked in and it really was time for bed.

So…at the risk of repeating my final words from last year…

Thank you Japan. Again, it's been an incredible, wonderful experience. We will be back**

It's all been rather lovely.

Chris and Tracey

*my arse she didn't!

**...although this time perhaps not until the madness of the Rugby World Cup and Olympics are out of the way.