Shop till You Drop

I remember why I love Japan.

It’s not the trains,the food, or the pop culture. Its the contrast.

When you can be in a massive city, with smoke towers and factories, signs and department stores, one moment and the next mountains piercing the landscape, small rural towns with traditional architecture, acres of fields and trees everywhere.

That’s what it’s like on a Shinkansen. Flash frames of different parts of Japan, speeding past so fast they practically stand still. (Couldn’t get any of the country areas because they zoomed past so fast)

But today, it wasn’t just like that on the journey to Hakata ‘a suburb’ of Fukuoka. After the Shinkansen arrived at exactly when it said it would, 11:30am, I had about 5 hrs before I could check in.

Outside Hakata Station

Hakata station is a massive terminal filled with so many shops. Department stores upstairs, downstairs, restaurants, stalls, everything. Which is not surprising for a Japanese train hub. Do you think I could find an open coin locker… No, I could not. So I dragged my bag to Daiso in the building next to the station and went looking for a middle sized backpack, which I realised pretty quickly I was going to need rather than carting my big backpack around.

Daiso is a wonder in Australia, but it’s even better in Japan. I found these gems and bought a backpack (nothing fancy, unfortunately, I looked)

I may have also bought these…

But thats only cause I don’t have them and they don’t release new ones in Daiso Australia. I could’ve bought more, I found another shop in the station that had amazing stuff.

But I limited my purchases to useful things. Like this cute bag, which is much better than my current mini bag

But I didn’t just spend today shopping. I finished around 12:00 and figured I’d see if my hotel would let me check in early. They wouldn’t, but they stored my bags and repacked into my new backpack and checked my schedule for something to do. I found it, but it really deserves its own post.

Here’s what I ate today:

Also, Ekiben are overrated. The cutlet sandwichs were fine and the karage was okay as well but neither was anything to write home about.

I admit it. I’m already missing salad and fresh fruit and vege. As much as I like the premade food, it lacks a little crisp, fresh, aliveness. So I found a supermarket bought some 880yen =$8 strawberries.

I’ve got to say it was 10000% worth it. They were the best, most juicy strawberry tasting strawberries EVER! I enjoyed every single moment I ate them. They were dinner along with an apple and a sandwich