gm.me.uk Playing with the sand at the side of the road

Japan 2017 Redux: Day 8 "Going home club"

Day 8: 2017-05-05 Friday

It’s tough to know what to do on the last day of a holiday. The evening is always kind of booked out thanks to needing to pack, or more precisely, to worryingly pace around an open suitcase with dirty clothes spilling out.

This leaves a day where one doesn’t ‘want to go too far’, and my advance plans certainly did not extend to cover this situation.

What it left was a day to do some stuff that isn’t really that classically touristy in the Japan-specific sense.

Hama-rikyu Gardens

There’s a massive public park near Shiodome Station called Hama-rikyu Gardens. It has some impressive grounds, with plenty of water features, and it’s a great place to get a good walk in.

Hama-rikyu Gardens set against the rest of Tokyo
Hama-rikyu Gardens set against the rest of Tokyo

The juxtaposition of the lush green with the skyscrapers in the background proved too good to not photograph numerous times.

The park has lots of lakes and feels like a nice change of pace from the rest of the city
The park has lots of lakes and feels like a nice change of pace from the rest of the city

From here, the next stop was the Museum of Yebisu Beer. It’s a fairly large brewery mostly aimed at tourists, but it was a fun way to spend an hour or two looking around, and trying some of the product out at the ‘salon’ afterwards.

The tasting platter from the Yebisu museum
The tasting platter from the Yebisu museum

My intention here was to head over to Odaiba on the Yurikamome Line, which loops and heads over the Rainbow Bridge to get to Odaiba, just as the sun was setting to get a great view of the bridge at twilight.

It turns out the sun sets pretty quickly, so it was pitch black by the time we were passing over said bridge. We’ll get revenge next time.

I don’t really know what to say after that, because the final place I went on this holiday, after everything, was the mall. The LaLaport Toyosu, to be exact. Sometimes, you just want to do all those things that the high schoolers in the going home club would do, right?

In this instance, that involved going to a family restaurant and getting Japan’s take on a scotch egg, which was very good, but very different presentation from what the pub down the road will give you. Then finishing up with dessert at the local Krispy Kreme. Given we started(-ish) the trip with donuts, it felt right to end it with them as well.