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Today we slept in a bit. I had some salad for breakfast and then we walked over to Blue Bottle to get coffee and granola for M. We came back and did final packing before checking out of the hotel and leaving our luggage to be picked up later.
Then we braved the heat and humidity once again for a short walk south to Kitashinagawa, as recommended by Mihaela the other night. Although it's only ten minutes from the bustle around Shinagawa Station, there is an old time neighbourhood in Kitashinagawa that is relatively quiet and has small local shops and cafes along an attractively old-feeling street. (I learnt after coming home that this was actually originally Shinagawa-juku, a post station on the Tokaido, the sister walking route to the Nakasendo.) We walked slowly in a light rain, passing several interesting places, nice looking bakeries, cafes, and also a couple of shrines and a Buddhist temple.
We stopped in a place called KAIDO books&coffee, which had an invitingly cozy decor with many shelves full of books. Besides coffee, they did some interesting looking meals, with home-made sausages for various hot dogs, as well as some pizzas and soups. The hot dogs actually looked really good. We ordered cool drinks - I got an iced tea soda made with ginger and lemon tea. We enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere as we sat and refreshed a bit.
Eventually we had to leave and walk back. M. wanted to look in a shop near the Blue Bottle cafe in the station, so we took a loop around the eastern side of the station, with fitful rain continuing intermittently. She stopped in at the shop and bought another UV protection umbrella to have a couple handy for use at home. Then we continued on back to the hotel.
We grabbed some lunch at the French bakery just outside the hotel. I had a slice of quiche and a pain au chocolat, while M. had some slices of a rye style bread and some small scones. We brought them into the hotel to eat, but were stymied by large notices in the lounge area prohibiting eating. So we went down to the food court and ate them there, flouting the numerous signs saying that bringing in external for was prohibited. Apparently there's nowhere you can eat take-away food here. After eating we returned upstairs and collected our luggage and sat in the lounge area for a while to relax.
Our flight was scheduled for 22:00, which meant we wanted to leave for the airport pretty much in the middle of rush hour on the trains. That didn't seem like fun, so we decided to go early, leaving before 17:00. We carted our luggage out and across the road to Shinagawa Station's Keikyu Line entrance, which fortunately was on street level on our side, so very easy to get to. We queued for the train to Haneda and caught one which wasn't too crowded.
At Haneda we checked the departures board, but our flight wasn't yet listed. We were too early for our flight to appear at the end of the board, so we looked at some of the shops before going through the security and immigration checks. There was no queue at either, so that process was very quick. Once inside the security area I looked at a departures board again and noticed that the very first flight listed was a Qantas flight to Sydney, departing at 22:00, listed as delayed to 20:00 - presumably the next day. I checked my boarding pass and it was the same flight number. We had a brief moment of panic, thinking our flight home was delayed by a day, but realised that this must be last night's flight, delayed until 20:00 tonight. Phew! After our experience with our last international trip, the last thing we wanted was a day's delay getting home this time.
We tried the ANA Lounge to see if we could get in with our Gold KrisFlyer status, but the staff checked our boarding passes and said we also had to be flying on a Star Alliance flight, and Qantas is not a member. So we slowly wandered the main terminal area, seeing where everything was. M. stopped to buy another gift for my mother. Then we found a comfortable place to sit for a bit and wandered around individually to get drinks and look at anything we were interested in. After a bit we got some sushi from the food court area for dinner and then moved to near our departure gate.
The plane was a bit late arriving from its previous destination, and the flight crew were sitting waiting with the passengers in the gate until it arrived and they could go on board. The first to board were the pilots, but the cabin crew stayed behind and continued waiting. I asked M. why they wouldn't also go on, and she said the pilots had a lot of work to do, flipping all the switches in the cockpit. Eventually all the crew boarded, and then passenger boarding began almost half an hour late.
As we boarded and I took my passport wallet from M. and removed the passport, I noticed that two things that we'd put into that wallet for safe keeping weren't there: the Magic: the Gathering card I'd bought in Nakatsugawa, and the receipt for the duty-free liquor I'd bought at Sydney for pick-up on our return. I asked M. where they were, and she was dumbfounded and said she had no idea, they should have been in there with the passport. I suspect they must have fallen out when I pulled out my passport to go through customs and I just didn't notice. With the plane boarding and no real hope of going back to find them, we had to be philosophical and just shrug and carry on.
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