Day 7: Visiting Tsukiji, Shopping and our last night in Tokyo

The plan was for us to have breakfast at Tsukij this morning. Ever since our last visit to Japan, the husband has yearned to be head back to Tsukiji again. So finally, this day has come where we managed to tick this off his want list. After grabbing coffee and feeding the kids some bread (their version of breakfast), the #happyfamilyinjapan crew met at the lobby and headed to the markets. It was just a few stops away from our hotel/train station.

Wandering the stalls

#ootd

Our aim this round was simple - to just eat our way through whatever tickled our fancy! The husband picked one particular hole-in-wall restaurant which had very limited seats, so we split up for a while.

This little boy chose to eat with us

The end

J's rendition of our breakfast situation

Fresh fish = happy boys

We had some sets of fresh, fresh sushi and it felt so amazing to sit on the stool to absorb all the buzz in the area. The chefs all looked rather intimidating as they skillfully packed sushi with their nimble fingers. It still felt a bit much to have raw fish for breakfast, but an experience is an experience so one off the list! After eating, we headed off and ventured to meet with the rest.

Sun up in full glory

Making our way through more food stalls

Reunited! And look how happy everyone is! They were well into their meal; don't let the shabby setting fool you, the food was pure gold!

Happy street-side eaters

Uni, anyone?

Uni. Oysters.

Oh the uni experience

K loves her ikura

Soft-serve

It was so good, we went back for thirds

Grilled seafood goodness

We stayed at our food corner for a (long) while, going through food (some purchases more than once), then finally, when we felt satisfied, moved on to venture other parts of the market we haven't went to yet.

Us in the busy streets

See food, seafood.

Having a moment with her strawberry

This made me smile :) I love watching the children enjoy food!

I cannot remember what they were eating but we ate it all

This walking-around-to-eat journey was very different from what the husband and I experienced before. The highlight then was the auction, this time it was sheer enjoying of food. Having good company made it even better.

Our final stop for sashimi

Seahs at Tsukiji

By then, it was mid-day and the sun was so hot. We were full from an extended brunch and decided to head to the city for some shopping. Off to Shibuya we went.

In front of the busiest crossing in the world

We were at this mall (Hachiko, refer to sister's post for that family pic) and the family split up for some time to just walk about free-and-easy. As the husband and I were not inclined to buy anything, I requested for us to go to the Lindt café that I spied earlier.

Lindt

It was a 4-storey building that sold chocolates and had a bar/cashier on level 1, levels 2 & 3 were seats for diners and level 4 was a toilet. We indulged in some major-chocolate-overloaded beverage (YUM) and spent our hour sitting within, enjoying the cool air-conditioning with our amazingly-tasty choices.

Drawing, researching on what to draw and
look at the chocolate goodness

At the designated time, we met back with the family and headed to group-shot to select places (Adidas, Under Armour, Uniqlo, ....)
So, a funny thing happened at Uniqlo. It was a 3-storey building of Uniqlo, and I had K with me and we were browsing around. We were on L1 when I registered a sound calling my name.... I thought I was imagining it, but I wasn't. I headed to the middle of the stairway, and I looked up into the upper levels and saw my parents waving at me from above.


"We are stuck, we cannot go down!" said the mother.
?!?!?!?!


Turns out, they had taken the escalators up and up, not realizing that the top level was not Uniqlo. It was a level of restaurants which were not open. There was only an escalator leading up and none coming down. So, they were stuck.


I quickly asked help from a staff and - no need for panic- the parents made their way down eventually. After this point, we headed to different places. The sister, her busband and the parents went walking about and ended up at Muji. My family headed to H&M to get clothes for the children.


The boy needed to poop so the husband brought him to locate a loo. The girl and I continued shopping.

Someone very happy with her new cap

As the boy had the runs the day before, I was worried that he was unwell. Turns out that not only was the boy fine, this need to search for a toilet turned out to be a blessing. In this place which had the loo, we also found the Michelin-Star cup noodles which was something we had been hunting for our whole trip in Japan! -cues amazing applause-

Husband and his proud ah-ha moment

Winner winner cup-noodle-winner!

Noodle mules as we made our way to MUJI to look for the rest

The Muji café was quite nice. The whole building was full of Muji stuff from clothes to furniture to café; and I kinda wish I had more time to stroll within. All 4-storeys of Muji! I was kinda tired though, so was happy to just sit down at the café and chill. After raving about how we finally found the noodles, just in time too as we fly out the next day, we decided that maybe, what we had bought was not enough. Just 4 cartons?! So the husband made a decision to go back and get more. I accompanied him and this is when I had my second encounter with instant noodles - the first being here as I nearly killed someone with flying cup noodles).

Not my best moment.... photo credit: the cruel husband

Besides being shamed, I was not hurt otherwise - ha! We then made our way back to the hotel to drop our cartons before heading out for dinner. Just as we were leaving the café, we had a mini episode where we nearly lost the boy. After some mild moments of near-panic, we were reunited and everyone was safe again. Phew! (The sister wrote an account here.)


We ran through the list of things we had eaten and decided that it was time to have some BBQ beef. Not before we (1) continued to add to our beer tally (2) made a decision to go to Isetan (because in Japan) and (3) we were not that hungry yet anyway as we had a bite at the Muji café.

The B caught in action chugging down beer. TSK.

The men figuring out navigation

The rest, just... hanging (our value-add was keeping the kids
distracted so they did not destroy the men hard at work)



SHINJUKU TRAIN STATION (that's what it reads in the light glare area)

We made it to Isetan (yay) but it was closing in 30 minutes (boo). We split up to make moving about more convenient, and so the parents went off in one direction... and turns out the sister and her busband were telepathic with us as we met each other a very short while later at the food area. HAHA #eatingourwaythrough indeed.


I know it was pre-dinner, but it was just so glorious to be able to walk around and eat as happily as can be. We had donuts, some tasters and the sister was so sweet she was already in the Q to buy a strawberry shortcake as I wanted to go get one to fulfill that craving!

Mmmmm.

We ate a lot more snacks, and we discovered that we were not allowed to eat in the food zone (go figure). We met up with the parents and then headed out to the streets to locate our dinner. We ended up walking up and down a bit because we had no plan, but the final destination turned out to be ok, we had beef and bbq and beers and we all walked out smelling like our dinner.


We took the train back to the hotel and started the task of needing to pack - groans. That did not stop us from our nightly gathering (without the sister who was sick) where the B briefed us on the next day's plan.

My view from the bed.

Fruits of our labour - tasting the Michelin-noodles!

It has been such an amazing week and I was quite tired by this time. I think we really maximized our days fully from day to night to late-night as we conducted our own parties. We also steadily kept to our beer count and made really good progress!


As I attempted to pack a bit that night, I definitely felt happy and very full - in my tummy and heart #happyfamilyinjapan