Japan, Day 8 - Tokyo, Harry Hedgehog Café

We switched hotels for our last night in Kyoto/Osaka and stayed at the Itami Airport, because we had an early morning flight up to Tokyo to catch the next morning.

In Tokyo we were also staying close to the airport, so it was easy to just pop by the hotel and drop the suitcases, on the way into town. More train trips of course.
I must say though, even though there are an immense amount of people on the trains and in the subway, riding the trains is a super pleasant way of traveling in Japan. Everybody follows the "rules" and instructions, you walk this way on the blue path and that way on the yellow; you queue for the train on the side of the door so that people can get off first when the doors open etc. Nobody pushes, or pushes ahead, everybody are so polite.

And - it's super clean everywhere. Something which is astonishing in itself considering there are absolutely NO rubbish bins anywhere! It's impossible to get rid of the odd candy wrapper or used tissue, people just pack up and take their rubbish with them! It's great!

Our first stop was to do a quick pass-by to see the famous Tokyo Tower:

The Tokyo Tower is higher (333 m) than the Eiffel Tower, on which it is based.

It was lunch time by now, and since we were all really hungry we popped in really quickly to a small restaurant we passed. Even here you ordered your food in a sort of vending machine! We felt very lucky we had Misuzu who could help us, as the pictures were not really a big help...

The kids were not too keen on the noodle soup, but we also got some really yummy ebi tempura, which got devoured by all.

For the afternoon our sights were set on another animal café, Harry the Hedgehog Café.

These type of cafés are really popular here in Japan, and when we came the café was really busy. We paid for a 30 minute-slot and got equipped with gloves plus a quick introduction in how to scoop up and handle the hedgehogs, and then they were all ours. So cuuuuute...

We also bought some (live!) hedgehog food to feed them with, they sure liked that!

As soon as you had scooped them up, and if you covered their eyes, they fell asleep in your hands:

We weren't too sure what this little hedgehog tried to tell us though... ha ha!