Saturday 26th was my 21st birthday. In the morning we headed to Akihabara, intending to go to a cat café, but were disappointed when we found out it was fully booked until 3pm -_- We stopped at a café for a drink, and I opened my cards which Mum had bought with her. We had a bit of a wander and found a flea market that was going on at the time nearby. A girl was dressed as a vocaloid and dancing, apparently to sell tea, not sure though. We had some pizza for lunch (Mum and Paul are vegetarian and finding food here which doesn't have random bits of meat and fish slipped in is easier said than done).
After that we headed back for a nap, we had done a lot of walking up until then. Then for tea we went with Laura to Matsubaradanchi in search of a curry house I had read about online. We couldn't find it but we found another place instead nearby so that did just fine. Laura gave me my presents from the her and the others, including a packet of tortilla wraps (hideously expensive here) and a cat plushie ^_^ We ordered our curries, but unfortunately Mum and Paul's came with tiny bits of meat floating in the sauce. I asked the waitress and luckily they said it was fine to remake it without. Lucky really, although Mum couldn't understand why they had put meat in the vegetable curry...
After that we headed back to the hotel room for some celebratory whiskey and lemonade, snacks and some J-dorama, which was some kind of Sherlock-Holmes-with-cat thing. Headed home and called my Dad on Skype, then promptly fell asleep.
On the Sunday, we went to Otemachi, pretty much right in the centre of Tokyo, to visit the Imperial Gardens. It's all tall buildings and wide roads in that area, but the gardens were an amazing break from all of that. Plus it's free to get in! They had a variety of different styles of garden, lakes and mini bridges and old buildings set over a large area. It was very hot that day and there wasn't much shade so walking round was a little tough, but it's definitely a great place to visit in the area. We relaxed the rest of the day, and on Monday I saw them off at the station where I didn't have to catch the direct train to the airport to save some money, and I figured it was difficult to go wrong at that point ^_~ After that they headed onwards on their little jaunt around this part of the globe, heading to New Zealand and then Singapore before going back home to a slightly annoyed kitty.
Really it was a very short trip but we managed to pack a lot in, perhaps to the detriment of our feet. It was nice to have visitors over my birthday again and to see family though. It made me realise how quickly things were going though when Mum said it would only be about 9 weeks until I saw them again o_o
