When a vacation in Asia comes to an end, I like that final day to be structured like this: breakfast, airport, flight home, home. The idea of starting an international flight sweaty and dirty from a day’s adventures isn’t appealing to be. When I plop down in my Premium Economy seat and tuck into whatever gray, saucy, slightly upgraded meal Delta’s serving … I want to feel fresh.
So this trip’s 5:30 p.m. flight out of Tokyo challenged me to step outside my comfort zone a bit. Clyde, as usual, was up before six. The car taking us to the airport wouldn’t arrive until 1:30. And the idea of dropping $45.00 USD for a sausage or two at the Westin Tokyo felt anti-climatic.
So: with a little help from Adam Parker, I pulled together a quick, low-impact plan for the day: an authentic Japanese breakfast, a revisit to an atmospheric shrine we last saw four years ago, a stroll in a nearby neighborhood … and then time at the hotel to freshen up before catching that Tokyo-Minneapolis-Memphis flight.
Musubiya is a happy breakfast shop that’s as bright yellow as a fuzzy newborn chick, with rice from the family farm gracing the breakfast bowls:
It’s a tiny shop, and since we’re early risers, we had the full attention of one of the young owners, who seemed eager for us to experience the best the shop had on offer: salmon, egg tamagoyaki, furikake, and veggies over rice, plus a bowl of the port soup:
No Marriott sausage and stale toast in sight! Instead: fragrant bowls of silky broth with succulent slabs of pork, hot rolled omelettes (tamagoyaki) with just a touch of sweetness, furikake (dried fish flakes for crunch and flavor), and steamed veggies. This is the way to start a final morning in Tokyo.
From there, a taxi over to Nezu Shrine, the oldest in Tokyo, best known for its Edo-period entry gates, its immaculate gardens, and its tunnel of vermillion tori gates:
Despite morning rush-hour traffic, we were back at the hotel by 11:30 with a full two hours to download books and movies for the trip back home.
So there’s a travel principle for me apply going forward: while I still prefer a “get up and go” strategy for the last day of a trip, with an eye on the clock and a good plan, those liminal last mornings in town can be transformed into a pleasant little ending for the latest adventure.
