Tokyo take 2! Our final stop before heading home. For our first night back in the capital, we checked into a capsule hotel. What a weird affair! Your bags stay downstairs in a locker, and you walk up with your pjs in arm to find your little capsule. They're hard to describe - like bunk beds I guess but you get your own private section with everything inside including a TV. We opted for a double and it was surprisingly comfortable!

The next morning we explored Ginza. Being a Saturday, the main road (the 5th avenue of Tokyo) was turned into a walking street. Max loved it as it's home to the biggest Uniqlo in Japan. For tea, we stayed local to our hotel in Shimbashi and found a teppanyaki place just around the corner. We cooked Japanese Wagyu beef, including a rib set and loins, on our little grill. Rumour has it that Wagyu beef comes from cows that have been ridiculously nurtured by being massaged and played Japanese music to. If this is the case, it definitely works! The beef is a right treat. We tried local plum wine to wash it down, which was also delicious.

Our second to last day was a beautifully sunny Sunday. So we headed to Yoyogi Park to stroll around and see the cosplay culture at its height. When we were ready for a drink, we visited a very special café - a cat café! A short queue led us into a tiny boutique café that was home to 16 cats, some fluffy, some stripy, some playful and some sleepy. It was a fun experience to have a drink whilst watching the cats play and stroking them. After, we mooched around Shibuya once again, and Max got some treats in Muji, followed by sushi in Uobei.

To celebrate the last night of our travels, we crammed into a busy izakaya (Japanese pub) and ordered an Asahi. We were sitting at the bar and got chatting to a local next to us (mostly through google translation!). In true Japanese spirit, he ordered us a Kushikatsu dish. It arrived as different fried and battered meats on sticks. You dip them once into a special sauce on the table which was ridiculously yummy.

Before we could believe it, the last day of our travels arrived. A great deal of pruning meant our backpacks were stuffed with souvenirs and ready to head home. We checked out of our hotel and left our bags there to spend our last day in Tokyo. First stop was the Tsujuki Fish Market, the biggest fish market in the world. It didn't stink as much as we thought it would! We went to the wholesaler part and saw the sellers in action. Many of them were chopping up the hugest tuna we have ever seen. Naturally, for breakfast we had sushi at the market - probably the freshest sushi we will ever have in our lives. It was so fresh that they didn't put any sauce or wasabi over it. For the afternoon we visited Yushu-Kan, a war museum. It's a controversial one as it discusses WW2 and still features some propaganda. It was crazy reading the translations of letters written by Kamikaze pilots to their wives and parents before they made their final flights.

Now we have experienced all of our destinations in Japan, we can say that it feels like the safest country we have ever been to - including our own. It's the only country we've ever been to where, in a pub, you leave your iPhone on the table or bar to save your seat. Even the bikes in the street aren't chained to anything and people walk along with iPhones sticking out the top of their back pockets.

Back in Shibuya we had our last ramen for dinner at Ichiran. In the evening we picked up our backpacks and found our way on the subway to Haneda International Airport for a long flight home. By the time we were on the plane at 12.30am, we crashed out across 3 seats for nearly the whole 11 hours. Unfortunately, due to turbulence that flight was delayed so we missed our connecting flight and had to be put onto the next one. After a long 8 hours on our second flight from Qatar, we safely landed back at London Heathrow. Wow. We're home!

Steph and Max x