Today, we woke up earlier (~6:45 am) and headed to try out the public onsen at our hotel (so far, we had only used the private one included in our room). Since the baths are nude, they were separated by gender; Benton was alone in his and was entertained by the little stalls with benches to sit on while washing off. Lucy did briefly share her onsen with one other person, but for the most part, she was alone as well.
After the onsen, we packed up, ate another big breakfast, and then started the journey to Tokyo (on the same, slow bus that we took to Hakone). We took the bus back to Odawara Station, where we boarded the JR metro, and rode another 1.5 hours to Tokyo Station. There was an Onitsuka Tiger in Tokyo station (the shoe place that Benton liked in Osaka), so we stopped to try and buy shoes, but this location was also out of Benton’s size.
We also grabbed some unagi donburi (eel) at Tokyo station, before picking up Lucy’s duffel that we stored earlier in the trip. We metroed to our final hotel (Section L Yushima-Ueno), which was pretty quick, where we dropped off our luggage.
From the hotel, we walked to Ueno Park, passing by Shinobazu Pond (which had a ton of lotus plants growing in it), before making our way to Ueno Ameyoko Shopping Street (we didn’t really plan on going through this, but we ended up going through it anyway).
We made our way to Akihabara Electric Town, which is known for a ton of gaming/anime/electronics shops, and we got some gyukatsu (deep-fried beef) at Gyukatsu Ichi Ni San (it had a bit of a line, and reviews online had it highly rated). This place was fun because right before we ate each slice of beef, we seared it for 10 seconds on each side on our own personal stone grills. The food was really good (but still nowhere near as good as the tonkatsu we had in Osaka). We also went to one more Onitsuka Tiger store (and this time Benton was finally able to buy the shoes in his size).
Finally, we grabbed some taiyaki from Naruto Taiyaki Honpo before heading back to the hotel, watching The Truman Show, and then going to bed.
