Travel Diary #2: Central Japan Day 6 (Final) (2/2)

Final day in Central Japan continued as we went shopping at Rinku Premium Outlet and Seacle Shopping Mall from morning till evening.

After having an early lunch at McDonald's where I tasted the Pork Cutlet Burger which is not available in Singapore, we continued shopping around Seacle Shopping Mall.

At Seacle, there's a 100-yen shop named Seria. It's similar to Daiso, which is also available in Japan (One of the outlets is at Diver City Tokyo in Odaiba), where they sell various items from household items to stationery to DIY products at 100 yen. Well, not 100 yen because tax has not been included yet. Every item sells for 108 yen after 8% tax is added into it so when you enter the 100-yen shop, remember to add 8% into the price.

Unlike Rinku Premium Outlet, Seacle is a local shopping mall. Seria? Of course you never hear it before elsewhere. Not to mention Sundi (A local supermarket), Celule (Cosmetics), Takiya (Drugstore) and Nishimatsuya (Nursery items store). However, there's one store where most people playing games will know, Namco.

There's an amusement center named Namco located at the 1st floor. Inside there, there's a lot of arcade machines to play with, from claw machines to Taiko to pachinko.

Every game of claw machine costs 100 yen. Since I have a lot of coins, I decided to play for it. There are many prizes available such as plush toys, chocolates and collectible models. I played for a box of chocolates which I wanted to send it as a gift but after playing 5 or 6 times, I gave up.

My younger brother also decided to play but the note was wrongly inserted into a coin machine which game tokens came out instead of 100 yen coins. Sadly, there's no refund for the game tokens hence we used up all the tokens playing different games. As I was using up all the tokens, my younger brother exchanged for 100 yen coins at the right machine and played the claw machine for the collectible model. After 20+ tries, he finally got it! That collectible model he got was an expensive one, over 2,000 yen.

The collectible model which my younger brother won.

We headed for another lunch at a sushi restaurant named Daikisuisan. That sushi restaurant was recommended by a Japanese TV program. How did I know? I knew it after we left the restaurant when I saw a sticker pasted on the restaurant. The show, "Maki's Magic Restaurant", was previously shown on Singapore's cable TV (now defunct) so I knew that the sushi restaurant was featured on TV.

We headed back to Rinku Premium Outlet for the remaining 3 hours to walk around and shopped again. After that, I had crepe for my afternoon snack at a food junction.

At around 6pm JT, our tour members gathered at the meeting point. We left the premium outlet and headed to Kansai International Airport (KIX). 2 buses were there to pick us up so we were separated into 2 groups again. We took the bus which had a lot of luggage behind us.

Around 15 minutes, we arrived at KIX. The check-in counter had not opened yet so we went down to have dinner.

A Pokemon Store at KIX.

Okonomi-yakisoba for my dinner. That dish was also featured on "Maki's Magic Restaurant" like that sushi restaurant.

Other side dishes like fried chicken with potatoes and croquette.

We checked in our luggage at the counter after dinner and went in to the departure gate for security checks. After that, my father and I went to the tax refund counter to return the receipt before heading for immigration.

Again, we went for our last minute shopping at KIX where we bought chocolates and heat tag.

Our gate was number 41 so we had to take a skytrain to reach there.

After we passed through gate 41, it was time to bid farewell.

Overall, the Central Japan experience was great even though there were rushing of time at some destinations where we had time walking and shopping. Hope to visit Japan again, although it would not be very soon, one day we will visit other places in Japan like Kyushu or Hokkaido.

Bye bye, Japan!