Shopping in Tokyo

I have scheduled shopping in the Nippori Fabric Town three days before we depart from Tokyo, thinking this will give us time to pack our suitcases and get them transferred to the airport by a third party so we did not have lug them on the trains. Turned out we needed to revise our plans. Today was a public holiday in Japan, Sports Day and the main fabric store we wanted to visit, Tomato, was closed. Instead, we had to settle for other stores that were opened. Our room came with breakfast; the buffet was very nice, a mix of Western and Japanese dishes. Since we slept in, there were not too many people in the restaurant. After breakfast, we took the hotel's shuttle to the Maihama station, and got on the local train to Niporri.

We spent a lot of time looking at fabric. I was going for Japanese prints, 100% cotton for quilting projects. Laurel found small pieces as souvenirs for members of her crafting club. We found some fantastic bargains, in fact most things were bargains since the exchange rate was very favorable to the dollar. The set of packaged fabric below, 3 meters total, were only 600-1,000 yen (about $4-$7.50) on clearance. We got a lot of stuff, and ended up buying a wheeled shopping bag to help carry them back to the hotel.

We also bought more souvenirs, cute "eco bags" that are foldable and used for shopping. In the late afternoon, we found a place to rest and had a late lunch, a tempura and udon/soba restaurant close to the train station.