Family Vacation @ Tokyo - Day 7, First Avenue Tokyo Station & Shinjuku

The last day in Tokyo. But we have not gotten the various kit kats that I would like to get. Hence we did a last minute research online the night before and saw that we could get the different flavours of kit kats in one of the shops near the Ramen Street in First Avenue Tokyo Station.

We spotted 2 key words. Kit Kats & Ramen! I like ramen and I would love to have a bowl of ramen again before we leave Japan. So the plan was to check out First Avenue Tokyo Station in Tokyo Train Station in the morning and Shinjuku in the later noon.

My parents keeping the kids entertained in the train journey. Or should I say my kids was keeping my parents entertained instead? Hehe

Tokyo Train Station is really big. After asking for directions, we finally found First Avenue Tokyo Station.

We decided to explore the Character Street in First Avenue first. It is an underground street that is lined with popular character shops. It was fun to be walking through the street, looking at all the cute lovely characters. It took me alot of determination to say no most of the times to my girl who wanted to get everything that caught her eyes (& mine too). Well, we bought souvenirs from Hello Kitty shop for the girls and a toy from Lego shop for Jayven.

After which, we walked further down to Ramen street to check out the stores. It was lunch time then and there were long queues at each store. And we spotted the shop that we intended to get our kit kats at the end of Ramen Street. Gotten many flavours such as Strawberry, Apple, Azuki (Japanese red bean), Wasabi but no sight of Matcha kit kats. I found out from the staff that they are only available in the airport.

As we were not too hungry (and we did not wish to join in the queues), we decided to visit Daimaru first. With no intention to shop for clothes, we ended up at the food section again. I was very keen to buy the grapes as they looked big and juicy. But selling at SGD20 per pack, I could not bring myself to buy them (I may probably swallow the stems too).

At approximately 1.30pm, we returned to Ramen Street and the queue has cleared by then. When it comes to dining, space was a deciding factor as we always have the stroller with us. Hence we decided on a ramen store that seem slightly more spacious, not too crowded but must have crowd (cos it will means that the food is good. Hard to please huh!) and the ramen picture on the vending machine looks yummy. Same as the earlier ramen store in Odakyu, we have to spilt into 2 tables as they do not cater to big groups and the food was served relatively fast. Yes yes, no pictures again as Janelle was starving and I had to attend to her immediately. Jayven was asleep then so no ramen for him. The ramen tasted better than those in Singapore but we still prefer the ramen in Odakyu basement.

Hence after satisfying our ramen cravings, we made our way back to Shinjuku. I went to Fancl in Lumine 2 to get my skincare needs before we proceeded to Odakyu again (I wanted to get my strawberry cake). There was a outdoor playground at Level 9 so we brought the kids there for play and my parents get to rest their tired feet before we continue to shop.

The playground

We went to the children department, gotten some kids' stuff and proceeded to basement again. At this point, the kids started their crankiness as it was past their nap time. Janelle was super cranky and she refused to walk any further. For the first time, she sat down in the middle of the pavement and refuse to get up and walk. My goodness! We did not want to give in to her tantrums so my hubs and I just moved on. She started crying (loudly!) and even though my dad offered to carry her, she did not want to budge. Seeing that she was not getting her way, she got up and ran towards my direction asking to be carried. I was carrying Jayven then (who was also kicking a fuss and refused the stroller). My dad offered to carry Jayven and he started to cry out loud. He wanted me to carry him whenever he is hungry or tired. So there we were, with 2 cranky tearful kids. It seems almost impossible to continue shopping, hence we decided to buy food from the basement and eat in hotel room. Thanks goodness my boy fell asleep after a while and with Janelle koala-ing on me, she fell asleep soon after too.

Just when we were about to walk back to the hotel, we came across Hokkaido Fair and my hubs was very keen to buy the famous Hokkaido White Chocolate Lover Biscuits. So we went in search for the biscuits. To my astonishment, he was actually tasked by his colleague to buy 4 boxes of the biscuit and we wanted to get for my in-law and family so we bought a total of 8 boxes and we requested for them to be packed in a carton box (to be checked in as we have no more space in our luggage).

On the way back, we chanced upon drugstore and I went to get the collagen jelly requested by my sister. However, they do not have the quantity we want so we went back to the hotel to offload our bags and have our dinner first. Just when my hubs and I was about to leave the room and continue to search for drugstore to get the collagen jelly, my girl woke up. Told her not to finish the strawberry cake slice but it was gone when I came back. Boo!

It was the last night in Shinjuku so my hubs and I just simply walked the streets of Shinjuku, enjoying each other company while my parents look after the kids.

Then we went back to the hotel to shower the kids and packed the luggages. We gotten too much souvenirs and some large bulky items so it was impossible to squeeze everything into 2 big luggages and 1 medium luggage. Eventually we packed some items into Janelle's new My Melody sling bag and into a hand-carry big paper bag.

Next we set the alarm to 3am as our flight were scheduled to depart at 6.30am. Don't ask me why our flight was so early. That's another long story. So the kids were dressed in their nicest sleepwear so that they can wear them on board (as I assumed that they would be sleeping all the way till boarding).