Shopping in Shinjuku and Ginza

The next morning, we got hot meat bao and pastries from the 7-Eleven next to the hotel. As mentioned in a lot of Japan travel videos, convenience stores like Lawson, 7-Eleven and Family Mart are everywhere. In fact, outside our hotel at Universal City, there were two Lawsons and a 7-Eleven across from each other and another Lawson inside the hotel itself. They sell almost everything, hot and cold food, beer, snacks, toiletries, umbrellas, raincoast, etc.; almost every store had an ATM and they are open 24 hours.

Free coffee from the hotel lounge completed our breakfast before we checked out at 10 am. We stored our two suitcases in the hotel lobby, and took off for more shopping and some sightseeing. The plan was to return for our luggage at night to take the train our next hotel when it is not so crowded. We decided to head toward Nippori Fabric Town to get the fabric we saw on our earlier trip to Tokyo. Unfortunately we were not aware that most of the stores were closed on Sunday.

Laurel found a vintage kimono shop on the other side of the train station away from Fabric Town. There are a lot of such stores, similar to US thrift stores, that sell gently used clothing at very low prices. Some of the haori (short kimono style coats) and kimonos were priced at 500-1,000 yen. We spent some time selecting haori and kimono and accessories, the sellers was very happy with our business and gave us each a bottle of cold water (it was hot and humid). After completing our purchases, we followed the crowd to see what else was out there.

Turned out the street led to the Yanaka Ginza area, with its well known shopping street and cat town. There were a lot of people on the narrow streets selling souvenirs and food. We walked down the street, bought some souvenirs and I started looking for lunch. Decided against standing in long lines for street food and drinks. Instead waited in line for about 30 minutes to get a table for some izakaya style food, i.e. small dishes like tapas along with speciality drinks. It was so good to get off our feet and sat on some interesting stools made from tin cans. They provided an English menu, and ordering was done via an app from a QR code access from our cell phone. It was pretty clear by now that one has to have data roaming in order to get around in Japan.

After a long and leisurely lunch, we went down the street again, got a few more souvenirs that were very reasonably priced, and ended up getting desserts at a cafe. Laurel ordered a matcha latte while I had a wonderful crepe with red bean filling.

Then we walked back to the train station to get retrieve our luggage to get to the Tokyo Bay Maihama Hotel First Resort which is about 90 minutes away. The crowds had diminished a little, and it was relatively easy to roll our new large suitcase and the carry-on down to the Shin-Okubo station, with two transfers to Maihama Station. At Maihama Station, we took the Disney Resort monorail (which accepted our Welcome Suica cards) for Discovery Bay station close to where our hotel was located. From there, it was just a 10 minute walk to the hotel, arriving at about 9:30 pm. At checkin, we were happy to hear that our two suitcases, transferred by Sagawa Express at the Park Front Hotel in Universal Studios two days ago, were already in our room! The luggage transfer service between hotels in different cities is so very useful, especially when taking public transportation. The cost to transfer the two suitcases (1 small, the other medium) was only $31.