Sadly, this day marked the end of our holiday in Japan. We were excited. There was still lots we wanted to do before we jetted out of the country. The day started well, we woke up in our luxurious room at the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa Hanakohro. We paid a visit to the exclusive lounge and was served this beautiful assortment of food for breakfast.
There were several pieces of fish, both cooked and grilled, tofu, egg custard and a serving of several miniatures. This selection of food looked more like a dinner than a breakfast. The most important thing was that it all tasted great.
We explored the other lounges at the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa Hanakohro. Each of the three other lounges served their own breakfasts buffet with some minor variations between the three. We mainly found the lounges great places to just catch some rest. I love how well presented and comfortable everything was the moment we walked into the lounge.
The garden/park that connect the four hotels was stunning and beautiful to walk around. There is a large pond in the middle of the park with large koi fish swimming around. I tried to capture the lush green in the morning.
This is the main pond from a different angle.
We checked out around 12:00 pm and we given a gift by our kind hosts. It was a beautiful test tube with some lavender fragrance inside. I think it is a common feature of 5 star hotels in Japan to give gifts to guests before they leave.
We headed to Ginza to do some shopping. Ginza is known for being the rich part of Tokyo and has many luxurious brands on the main street from Gucci to Hermes to Louis Vuitton.
For lunch, we booked on Kook for a lunch seating at Rabu Ginza Glasse. Unfortunately the restaurant is permanently closed. But it served some nice all you eat shabu shabu.
We order as many plates of this sliced pork as we wanted.
The sliced pork was cooked in this onion broth.
If we wanted, there was also a selection of side dishes and condiments we could pick up from the buffet bar.
When we done with the shabu shabu, we were treated to this delicious service of buckwheat soba in a delicious soy and sesame based soup.
We were incredibly stuffed by the end of our meal.
We paid a visit to the local Donki store. This places sells almost anything you can think of. It is regarded as a cheap discount store, which sells all sorts of things. Each stores carries a wide range of products, from basic groceries and confectionery to electronics and clothing. It’s a great place to look for little gifts for people.
Whenever I visit Japan, I make it a destination to pick up things that people have loved as gifts, like nail clippers, hair dye, face masks, branded clothing, kit-kats, etc.
I find that a lot of foreigners visit the Donki store, because every time I buy something there is always a huge line of foreigners looking to claim a tax refund. You can only claim a tax refund if you buy over 10,000 yen. You can get back 10 per cent of cost of your goods.
When it came time, we went back to our hotel in Shinagawa, picked up our luggage and headed to the airport using the NEX train from Shinagawa Station.
We arrived early at the airport. So we checked in our bags for our international flight back home and decided to explore and check out the stores in the security clearance/passenger clearance area. In all honestly, the stores and merchandise on the other side of the security clearance/passenger clearance is lackluster and not worth your time. I found the Japanese security clearance/passenger clearance to be pretty efficient so there is no rush to your gate, unless you are running short on time.
One store any person at the airport can visit is the Pokemon store. Sure it doesn’t sell all the merchandise you could want, but it manages to have a decent selection of things on sale.
I recommend grabbing your dinner/food before security clearance/passenger clearance as well. The choices are far superior.
Here is a map of the post security clearance/passenger clearance area. Sadly it’s not much and its definitely not like Singapore Airport (which is amazing by the way).
We caught our flight home with Qantas back home to Melbourne.
That’s the end of the trip.
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