So here we are, our last day in Tokyo. With our flight to Auckland early evening, we stayed close to our hotel this morning. The East part of Tokyo is surrounded by water and it’s perhaps not a surprise that the aquatics centre for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was located closeby.

After packing and checking out of our hotel, we wandered down to the Aquatic Centre and then on to the subway station for the 2hr journey to Narita Airport.

It’s only when you’re leaving a place that you start to notice what in Japan is normal, is anything but elsewhere. The vending machine at the station sells both hot and cold drinks, even alcoholic drinks and they are always fully stocked and payment can be made using your travel card.

And so this was our last train journey in Japan, after numerous trips in Tokyo and across Japan. Everyone has been a quiet ride, irrespective of how busy they are, sitting in carriages as clean as new, and without fail always on time.

We will miss the reliability, the friendliness of the Japanese who have helped us on our travels and always had time to direct us, even if language barriers made it a little challenging.

We arrived at the airport early and got comfortable in a coffee shop, caught up with the news and some book reading before rearranging our baggage (a recurring issue with the amount of stuff we have acquired – most of it Andy’s t-shirt and jean purchases!) and then checked into our flight to Auckland.

Below are two chocolate related ‘discoveries ’ during our stay.

As so it was time to say goodbye to Japan and board our flight back to the Southern Hemisphere.

Auckland was a 10hrs 35mins flight away and provided an excellent opportunity to catch up with our film viewing, alongside a glass of vino and a good meal.

We were last in New Zealand over 20yrs ago, so we are looking forward to reacquainting with all the country has to offer.

Tomorrow the next stage of our adventure begins with Auckland to be discovered.