vacation Monday: cat cafe and home

We met Travis and Scarlet at a nearby train station and rode to Takeshita Street again to go visit a cat cafe.  It was a nice cafe with nice cats.  We felt a bit taken advantage of because we bought a pack of twelve tokens for cat food, but then each cat food cost two tokens.  I'm sure that it was in the fine print, but it was a bit annoying.  The drinks were good too, and we got there right at the beginning before many people were there.  We were only allowed to be there for thirty minutes, and if we were there even a minute longer we would be charged an additional fee.  Thirty minutes was plenty, but watching the clock wasn't the nicest.

Anyway.  Here are the pictures, because there were a lot of smiles.

There was a brief stop at a candy store and then we meandered back to our hotel.  We stopped for a few minutes by a random sculpture.

We ate a very fast lunch at the 7-11; we had to check out by noon but otherwise we'd have to lug all our luggage around with us.  We got to the checkout with a few minutes to spare.  And then, sadly, we taxied to the airport.  Oh, let's briefly talk about taxis...it seemed like every time we were at a red light they filled out a log.  I looked it up and that's what it was - a log.  It surprised me a little bit, because it was hand-written which means that if the information is being used for anything it needs to be input manually.  I'm sure there is more than I'm understanding though.

Somewhere at the airport we also stopped at a restroom and there was a map of the available stalls !  There were several interesting methods throughout Japan on how to tell if a stall was available, but this was by far the coolest.

We had extra time at the airport because I'm always a bit paranoid about flying, but getting our bags checked and through security was a breeze.  So we had two goals: 1) finish up the money on the swica cards and 2) find a mochi gift for the person whose luggage we borrowed.  (The swica cards are the main method of payment for the trains, but many stores also take them.  Ben had put quite a bit of money on all of them at the start of the trip, so we tried to buy a lot of souvenirs using them.  It was especially nice since Joshua and Isaac could also pay for things using them.  Anyway, by the time we got to the airport they all had about $10 or less on them.)  The only store in the airport that would take swica cards was the 7-11 and it was busy!  So Ben and Isaac selected assorted treats and purchased them...and then they went back a second time once Ben realized how much was still on each.  I could fit almost everything in my extra backpack, except for some pizza flavored chips.  Joshua wanted to eat those right away, so it worked.  At this point each card had about 150 yen on them...just enough for four drinks from the vending machines.  We ended up with <11yen on all the cards, which is about eight cents (or less, for some of the cards!)

The plane ride went well.  The flight left around 3pm and I think I slept a significant portion of the flight.  I think Joshua did too, although we had forgotten about the reading portion of his homework.  He had to read two chapters before watching Dog Man, which he zeroed in on as soon as he sat down.  He finished the chapters after Dog Man and may have watched another movie; it's a long ride and with intermittent sleep I don't really remember what happened.

And, after another short plane ride, a very fast shuttle ride, and a car ride, we were home!  (And while I am really, really glad I spent the time on these blog posts, I'm also really, really glad they're done.)