Monday 24/12/18 in Tokyo

A big day walking around Tokyo with Noriko's friend Kirara who we stayed with. 

Her daughter Tamaki joined Mike and they pushed the wheelchair together. They had such a great time together. Kirara said Tamaki is normally a bit shy with new people especially with a guy but she got comfortable with Mike right away. We walked around downtown Tokyo and found Tabi for Noriko's friends in Melbourne and hard Tabi for Inti. 

Later, Koich joined us after we had Yakiimo at this Daikon shrine and we walked around even more. We wanted got some good washi but it was not easy. We found good Furoshiki for Sandy, though. 

We went back to their home and had home made dinner. Mike was so impressed with the freshness of the seafood Koichi brought home from work and tried everything. He was particularly impressed with Kirara's cooking and found out that is how Noriko became friends with Kirara in America when they were students there. 

It was her Tamaki's first time to eat Japanese style christmas cake, and she was very excited.

Sadly we had to say goodbye to Koichi, Kirara and Tanami to go to the next destination after dinner. 

 Noriko's aunt who lives in Tokyo messaged Noriko to see if we have time to have lunch or something. Because we had such a limited time and had to rely on free wifi it was too difficult to see her during the day. However she was happy to see us at the bus terminal near Tokyo station even after 10pm so Noriko sent her the address. We struggled to find the bus terminal a bit but she was already there with her daughter. We still had time until the departure time so we looked for a cafe to sit down but everything was shut unfortunately. We just bought some food from Family mart and went back to the bus terminal. There were so many people at the terminal and it was getting so late so we said goodbye to them and they left but they came back after awhile. Noriko's aunty wanted to give us a gift and she had forgotten so they had to come back all the way. We said thank you and said good bye again. 

The monitor said our bus had arrived so we were lining up until we were told that we were in the wrong queue. We panicked for a second but it was all good. There were more than one bus going to the same destination at the same time. 

Max kept us comfy during the bus ride.