Having decided that we didn't need another Disney day, we had one last free day before our return trip and decided to go to the Ueno zoo.

But of course the zoo doesn't open until later in the morning and I was up early, so I walked over to Ikspiari for breakfast at McDonald's (this time remembering they don't open until eight).

I got a few last shots of the anniversary monorail while there.





And also noticed a Disney Resort manhole cover:



Before heading back to the hotel with our breakfast, I bought day passes for the monorail, though as it turned out we only used it twice each that day, which is 100 yen less than the cost of the day pass, but it's nice as a souvenir anyway.



When we got to Ueno, there was lots going on in the park in general, before we even got to the zoo. Shoebills seem to be really popular right now, as we saw a stall selling shoebill sweets.

This dorayaki was tasty, though not anything out of the ordinary.



This manju was definitely more for looks than taste. Not terrible, but just sort of there.



There was a street performer doing a show that involved stacking a bunch of wooden chairs and climbing up them and doing handstands, often while hauling up even more chairs to add to the stack. He was really impressive!





A status of Prince Komatsunomiya Akihito, who was apparently the first president of the Japanese Red Cross.





Finally we reached the zoo itself.



The tickets were pretty cheap, and each one has a different animal on it. Although one of ours was a panda, there were actually no pandas currently in the zoo, as many prominent signs informed us throughout the park.



It was much sunnier than we'd anticipated and Carla forgot to bring a hat, so one of the things we bought from the gift shop right by the entrance was this nice hat with a shoebill design. Good for keeping sun off the neck as well! (Thankfully we did have sunscreen with us.) The palas cat was another one that seems to be very popular, and Carla got a cute fan and keychain.



We headed inside the zoo and just followed the main path along, hoping we would eventually come to the shoebill and palas cat areas, since the map was kind of hard to read. Although it was very sunny, there was a lot of shade once we were actually in the zoo.

A random Thai palace:



I did take a picture of the actual elephants, but they're not all that special, so instead have a picture of a nice elephant statue lol.



This was a shrine to all the animals who had passed away at the zoo over the years.



Birds:





A neat little tea house:



The statues in the zoo were really very nice.



It was a nice day for a visit as there were plenty of people around, but it wasn't crowded by any means and we could just wander around admiring the animals. There were quite a few exhibits that were closed, though, and it looked like parts of the zoo were under construction. Still a nice variety of animals, though.









After a while we came to a rest area with a restaurant. We weren't quite ready for lunch, but we did get some refreshing soft serve.



There's an upper and lower area to the zoo, and a large part of the lower area is taken up by this lake for the free-roaming birds.



We did eventually stop for lunch at Cafe Cameleon.



I got the sakura pancakes, topped with ice cream. They were pretty good.



Carla got what claimed to be a hamburger, but was hamburg on a bun instead. (Hamburg is more like meatloaf in terms of consistency than a regular burger patty.) It was tasty, though not what she was expecting.



They have a penguin exhibit!



And a red panda! So cute!



Mole rats:



And finally we found the palas cat! It was sleeping, but super adorable.



Lots of other little mammals:







And an armadillo who was rolled up for a nap.



Cute bats:





And last, but not least, the shoebill:





There's a second entrance/exit to the zoo that's much smaller and just goes right out into the adjoining neighborhood, rather than the park, and as it happened, that's right around where we ended up after seeing the shoebill, so we just exited there.

A couple days before when I had been bemoaning the fact that we'd had no luck going to a Pokemon Center, starlady had mentioned a couple possibly less crowded options and the Skytree one was not too far from where we were, and we were able to get a direct bus just across the street from where we'd exited the zoo.

The bus was SO CROWDED. Carla actually did manage to get a seat, but people just kept packing on and packing on as we went along. There were a couple old ladies sitting near where I was standing and they were even talking about how unusually crowded it was lol. At each stop, one or two people got off, but more people always got on than got off. Thankfully we were able to get off at our stop without too much trouble, though.

The walk to the Skytree mall was not far from the bus stop. We stopped at a little gacha shop on our way, but they didn't really have that many interesting options (I think we did get a couple, though).

In between us and the Skytree was a small river with some lovely cherry trees.





And then there was the Skytree itself:



We did not go to the top, though I'm sure the view from us there is amazing. Instead we just checked out the mall and finally found the Pokemon Center, which was indeed just normal levels of crowded, with no lines to get in or anything ridiculous like that.



Carla got a few small plushies, including an exclusive Pikachu with Skytree that we gave to Alex as a souvenir.



I'm not sure what was up with this guy, but he was just hanging out at the mall.



We made one more stop before heading back to Maihama. Carla had wanted to go to Don Quijote as she'd seen that in Japan they have a Korean flavor of the egg and soy sauce rice topping that she loves, but we had never happened across on in our travels so far (except one at Togoshi Ginza that was only coming soon, not yet open) and had not bothered to go out of our way for it.

I checked the map to see if there were any locations near us and there was one just one subway stop from where we were, so we hopped on the subway (the entrance to which was right underneath the Skytree mall).

Yet another great train safety sign:



There was a very odd sculpture/art installation thing near the station when we got off:



No idea what this is supposed to be lol.

The Don Quijote was a pretty small one, but it did have the sauce she wanted and we also stocked up on the Japanese sunscreen we like and can't find in the US.

I don't know why there were ghosts on the elevator doors in the shop, but it was cute.



From there we were able to take our usual train line back to Maihama, just the opposite direction from the one we usually take to get into Tokyo, and once at the station, we were able to finally check out Bon Voyage, as they were no longer requiring reservations to get in.

Unsurprisingly the decor was super cute, with lots of character statues, but the merch was all just the same as in the parks. Most of the other Disney stores outside of the resort have quite a bit of stuff you can't get at the parks (including the one inside Ikspiari), so we'd hoped for the same here, but in that regard it was a bit disappointing. I don't think we'll need to check it out again on future trips.













After that we headed over to Ikspiari to get dinner and we found a tonkatsu place that turned out to be super delicious. Also way more food than I was expecting from the pics on the menu, but we were able to finish it.



After dinner we went to the Disney store in the mall one last time and were very glad we had as they had some new plushies that hadn't been there the day before. We also stopped at Ichibiko once again to get some more strawberry milk and puddings for dessert to take back to the hotel. These puddings were so good.



And then we just relaxed at the hotel the rest of the evening and started packing up a bit for the trip home the next day.

I got up bright and early again the next day and took a walk around the hotels, not going anywhere in particular. I finished up packing when I got back to the hotel and got everything into three bags to check and just a few things like our Switches in a small carry-on separate from our personal bags, which are both too small for the Switch.

I hadn't made reservations for the limousine bus to the airport the night before because I wasn't sure what time we would want to leave, and figured I'd be able to do it in the morning, but that morning I just kept getting errors that made it unclear as to whether there were no reservations left or there was just something wonky with their website. We decided to go down to the pickup area when the next bus was scheduled to come and ask the driver, and then if we couldn't get on, just take regular public transport to the airport since our bags were now much easier to haul around with the wheeled suitcase to hold them all.

We checked out around ten and were turned away by the bus driver, so we took the regular shuttle bus to the train station and then took several connecting trains to the airport. Despite the multiple connections, it really wasn't bad at all.

We got to the airport around noon and checked our luggage, then explored the shopping area before the security checkpoint, which we had missed last time as we'd just hurried directly through security after checking our luggage. But the number of shops past security is much more limited, so this gave us something to do, as our flight wasn't until five.

There is a giant Godzilla inside the airport!





Lots of cherry blossom decorations, too, of course.





There were quite a few restaurants in the Edo Marketplace, but it was also lunchtime so there were lines for some of them. We settled on a tempura place that looked good and had no wait.



The food was delicious!





After lunch we checked out some of the shops and bought a few things, then stopped for dessert. Sadly, Carla was not a fan of either of the things I bought, but I liked them.

Sakura matcha latte:



Hojicha (roasted green tea) and matcha soft serve over a traditional dessert called anmitsu, which has various mochi and jelly things as well as red beans.



After dessert we checked out more shops, including a large gacha shop upstairs, and then just headed back towards security.

I love the pun:



Once we got through security, we mostly just sat around and waited for boarding, though we did go to check out the Pokemon machines at each end of the concourse. Sadly both were sold out of the pilot Pikachu plushies (we got one last year for ourselves but wanted to get one for Alex), though one of them did have some nice stickers, so we got some of those.

The plane we were on for the flight home was quite a bit smaller than the ones we'd flown on before, both in terms of overall size and seat size as well. Thankfully they had the AC on or I would have been sweltering. There was about a 10-15 minute delay in takeoff due to wind, but otherwise we were on schedule.

I didn't take any pics of the dinner, but I did get one of the menu:



We both had the pork with chirashi sushi. It was pretty tasty, better than the food on the flight in. And the ice cream they gave us for dessert was pudding flavored. I ate both mine and Carla's lol. (I think on the way to Japan they use US Haagen Dazs cups and on the way from Japan they use Japanese ones, so the flight over was just vanilla, but this one was a little more exciting.) Breakfast was pancakes and yogurt, which was not very exciting but was fine.

Immigration went very smoothly once we arrived. They had facial recognition machines and we basically just walked through. There was no separate bag check, either, so once we got our luggage (which took forever, as ours was the last off the conveyor), we were able to head directly out. We got an uber black for curbside pickup, since otherwise the uber pickup area is not at all convenient to the international terminal. The pickup was very fast, though, as there are always drivers lurking around the airport waiting for a fare, and we were home very quickly.

And to end with, various souvenirs that we got throughout our trip. I didn't take pictures of stuff until I got home, so then it was harder to work them into the timeline of the posts and just seemed easier to put them all at the end. I do mostly remember where we got them, though!

Two different Rapunzel insulated tumblers. The one on the right is from a Disney store in Tokyo Station, which we saw once and said we'd come back for, and then our return trip that day didn't take us through the same station. Carla ended up getting the one on the left at Bon Voyage instead, even though she liked the other one better, because she didn't think she'd have a chance. But then we ended up passing through Tokyo station on our way to the airport, so we were able to get that one after all. We gave the one from Bon Voyage to Alex since she's also a big Tangled fan.



Various Pokemon stuffs! The keychains and Gengar coin purse were from a little drug store across the street from our hotel in Umeda, which I got the morning before we left for Universal Studios. The Gengar thing at the top right is a luggage tag, which we got at the Pokemon Center (I think) but then weren't able to use on our luggage as the ballpoint pen in the hotel wouldn't write on it and we didn't have a marker. The Umbreon coin purse was from the airport.




Cute on the back side, too!



Also from the Disney store in Tokyo station, a Rapunzel terry cloth pillow cover.



The Pikachu stickers from the airport vending machine:



All these plushies were from various Disney stores outside the parks.



As were these. The sumo Baymax and sakura mochi Mochi were souvenirs for Alex.



Some gachas...I've forgotten now where these came from.



These gachas were all from the airport.



Disney Gachas. The ones in the middle were from the Disney store in Ikspiari.



More random gachas.



I think this keychain was also from the airport. Gengar and Umbreon are two of Carla's favorite Pokemon. I don't know who the other guy is.



This was from a Marvel shop in the Skytree mall, I think. It was a blind box and this was the last one left. I actually saw someone with one of these hanging on their bag at California Adventure the other day.



This was from a shop in the airport. So cute!



Carla bought so many stickers during our trip, especially from this B-Side Label brand, there's no way I could take pictures of them all, so this is just a selection of the ones I liked the most. And in fact, I ended up putting that one on the right on my bike!



Well, it has taken me two and a half months to write up this entire trip, working on both editing the photos and writing the text bit by bit every day, but now I have finally come to the end!