This is the last entry for the trip being written on Japanese soil. This time tomorrow night we'll be probably sitting in the plane ready to commence take-off for a painful 8+ hour flight to the gold coast. I'm still debating whether to take up Jetstar's business class upgrade offer for the trip home. It is a lot of money to spend just for single a better night's sleep.

It will be a short an uninteresting entry today, because we basically packed, shopped and rested.

Instead of risking our lives with the Co-op Inn breakfasts for a 2nd day in a row, we took our time this morning, did some preliminary packing and organising for tomorrow night's flight, and headed out for a walk to grab breakfast.

Walking straight past Tully's coffees we called into starbucks for our usual. 2 glande sizu hotto calamel latte, 2 kidzu hotto cocoa and 2 choco chunku cookie. Out of habbit I'll give them that order at the first coffee shop I go to in Australia and they'll look at me like I've lost my mind. I'll have to get out of the habit of saying domo arigato 50 times a day also.

While Veronica and the girls visited every damn 100 yen store in Kyoto, I checked out the ABC Mart shoe stores. Last time I was in Japan I picked up some very cheap Nikes for a fraction of the cost that we would be slugged in Australia, but this time it just wasn't as good. I found one or 2 pairs that would have been ok, but the prices didn't seem as great, nor did I like the available shoes as much. Instead of just buying a pair for the sake of getting a bargain, I left empty handed.

Walking the long way around through the shops, essentially just browsing for the last time on this trip, we walked back towards the Coco Curry for our last meal at what has to be our favourite restaurant chain. Fittingly, the same girl served us today that was our waitress 3 weeks ago.

Full and content, we wandered back towards the hotel, and grabbed a few more provisions for the flight, before returning to the hotel room for more rests, and final organising and packing of the bags. With all of the bags packed and ready to go, we headed out for more browsing, and dinner at around 6:30pm.

Since we can't get anything like it in Australia, we went back to Bikkuri Donkey. Again, amazing food, but if you've read my previous posts you'll know how much I like this place, so I wont go into it, except that if you visit Japan, you have to dine there once. There are 2 "not to be missed" restaurants that I can recommend in Japan from this trip. Bikkuri Donkey, and Centre4 Hamburgers Takayama. Both are so good I cannot pick a winner.

So dinner is done, and we're home and in bed. Well, when I say "in bed" I mean "on the floor on a thin mattress". As interesting and novel sleeping on a futon is at the beginning of the trip, now it is just painful. It isn't anywhere near as comfortable as a regular bed, and to add insult to injury, the pillows we have are as hard as bags of cement (I honestly think that they are bags of sand). Tomorrow night's sleep on the plane is going to be a nightmare, but I'm looking forward to my own bed after that.