Today started off with Anthony and I getting up (way too) early and heading out to the markets at Sensoji Shrine. We went there this time just to buy some souvenirs and a Samurai sword. The markets were busy and we were tired, but after a little browsing through stalls we found everything we wanted and had a good time doing it. We headed back to the hotel by 11:30, this would allow us time to go see Harajuku and hopefully some Cosplay.
In the end we had to wait for Lee, Sarma and Rob to get back from their adventure.They had walked to Roppongi to look at the 6 story shop that sells everything (also known as: Donkey). When we got to Harajuku it was packed, it was literally hard to move even a step. We headed over to the bridge where they were meant to be and saw two girls dressed up. We decided to get our photo with them. We then realised where we were. We were right in front of Meiji Shrine, which is the Shrine that we didn’t get to the other day. So we followed then Mass of people into the Shrine. There must have been something special on because the roads up had ice sculptures everywhere. They sculptures were beautiful, but i was a bit sad that they were melting away into nothing.
There was a lot of happening at the shrine, there was a wedding going on and people were buying arrows everywhere (I am not sure why they were buying them). We had a look around the shrine, after finding our way around the people.
We headed our way back to the bridge and saw the Cosplay people. There were not a lot there and some of those people were more weird then interesting. We found some lunch and relaxed a bit. We decided we had had enough of looking at Cosplay, and decided to head back to the Square Enix shop. We did some shopping for Anthony and got Tim the only present he wanted from Japan. We ended up getting a few things, including some rare final fantasy jewelry (queue Final Fantasy Victory music!).
We headed back into Shibuya because we needed to meet up with Kazue, who we met earlier on this trip, and her friend. We met at 7 at the dog statue and headed to an all you can eat Italian restaurant. The food was pretty good. We had a good talk over dinner. These people are just so nice! (We tried to sneak in payment for the meal without the girls finding out, but Chipi just stood there with the cash in his hand like a lost monkey not sure where to go). They then took us to a few places around town. Firstly a crepe place where we had some very nice crepes (then they pulled a sneaky on us and paid for our crepes!). They then took us to one of those special Japanese photo booth places. It was interesting watching them work is so easily and quickly. We all got a copy of the photos. We then did some shopping with them at a cool shop which sells nearly everything (similar to Donkey).
It was a really fun way to spend our last night. I am really going to Miss this country and especially the people here.