We met in the lobby to check out this morning, and caught taxis (three! To fit us and all our suitcases) to Kyoto train station to get a bullet train to Tokyo – more expensive than the local trains, but with reserved seats and room for all our luggage, it’s more my style of public transport 😉

We arrived at Tokyo station and caught three taxis to our new accommodation. And what an experience it was. I am finding it more, not less, difficult to communicate with taxi drivers. Thankful again for technology, I mapped our destination separately on my phone, and when the driver tried to drop us blocks from our hotel, I was able to direct him with Google maps the rest of the way.

The funniest moment was unfortunately not in my taxi…..our hotel is called the Pearl Hotel. Abi had spent so long telling herself it was Hotel, not Harbour, that in the stress of the moment getting in o a separate taxi (with Tom) and telling the driver where to go, she asked him to take them to “Pearl Harbour” 😳🤭 – now THAT we will be using against her for years to come haha.

Check in time was 3pm, so the hotel minded our bags and we went wandering around Akebonobashi. There were a few restaurants just metres from the hotel and the boys were hungry, so we had a late lunch of burgers and fries at Wendy’s.

By the time we checked in and unpacked, we agreed to meet at 4.15pm to brave the local trains to get to Shibuya. We worked them out with some slight difficulty, and while it may have only been 10-15 minutes of train rides, there was a lot of walking between platforms and lines.

But we made it! Shibuya Crossing was Sam’s bucket list item, so we made sure we crossed it, explored the shops around there, and then crossed it back again!

This place is Times Square to another level, so I made everyone hang on to a travel buddy, and we used Tom and Zac’s height to keep an eye on the others.

I then took everyone up to the Observation deck ‘Shibuya Sky’ in a shopping centre catted Scramble Square. Tickets for today were all sold out, so we went two floors down to a large viewing area where we could watch Shibuya crossing happen for free – the kids called it the common man’s observation deck!

We then braved the trains back home. With restaurants around us booked out, we all chose our own adventure from the supermarket nearby again, and congregated in the boys’ room to eat dinner (our room is even smaller than at the last hotel if that is possible, so we can’t host anyone!).

We encouraged everyone to get an early night ready for DisneySea tomorrow 😊 and then Ross went to take something for his back, and I went to ice my left ankle – everyone is very sympathetic but I do think they might be enjoying the fact that I usually break everyone else on holidays, but this time I’ve broken me!