Choose exactly one shopping branch: KOMEHYO or Kiya, never both. The departure links stop at the walk, local return and vehicle changes. Haneda stays terminal-neutral until ANA confirms NH871.
JAPAN 2026
STORE
QUEUE
CASES
FLIGHT
OUT AT 09:15, HANDS EMPTY
THE DAY THAT ENDS AT 23:30
2026
DAY XV · 16 SEPTEMBER · 出発
BUY IT NOW, THEN MAKE IT FIT
Checkout is voluntary at 09:15 — the hotel's own deadline is noon — and all four cases go into storage the moment it is done. What follows is a whole day of shopping and eating with nothing to carry: a discount store at half past nine, a queue at a quarter to eleven, one comparison and never two, a department store until a quarter past four, a bowl of ramen at half past. Then the day turns over. From 17:25 the hotel is a packing floor, at 20:15 there is a vehicle nobody has booked, and at 23:30 a flight that will not wait. The two largest movements of the day — the van and the shopping — have no figure attached to either.
Ginza 8-chome, in the third block of Ginza Nine, under the expressway and about five minutes on foot from Shimbashi's Ginza exit. The store's own page gives its hours as twenty-four, which makes it the only stop today that cannot be missed by being early or late — and the only one whose door is not the constraint. Forty-five minutes are allowed, 09:30 to 10:15, and the rule is a written list: snacks, consumables and pre-agreed practical items, nothing browsed into. Tax-free is handled in store; there is no car park, which matters little on a day with no car until eight at night. No list exists yet — T-11 closes the snack quantities on 29 August — and after a late birthday night this is the stop the fallback deletes outright, straight on to the queue.
Nihonbashi 3-1-15, a ground-floor room a few minutes south of the bridge. The main store opens at ten and runs to 22:30, and the plan joins the line at about a quarter to eleven — three quarters of an hour after opening, ahead of the office lunch. This is the one meal the traveller asked for by name, which makes it the day's only fixed appointment; the house answers by taking no reservation at any branch, Tokyo, Taipei or Hong Kong, and says so twice on its own front page. One dish in four grades on a card dated April 2025: Ume ¥1,350, Take ¥1,850, Matsu ¥2,500 with uni, Tokujo ¥3,900. The order is one Take and one Matsu, ¥4,350 for two. The bowl is eaten twice — most of it as sashimi over rice, then sea-bream dashi poured over what is left.
One comparison stands between the lunch and the department store, and the plan allows exactly one. KOMEHYO at Nihonbashi 2-1-10 opens 10:30 to 19:30, both buys and sells, and handles tax-free; its own page lists 9 and 24 September as closed and not the 16th. Kiya, in business since 1792, keeps its main store on the ground floor of Coredo Muromachi 1, weekdays eleven to seven, with a thousand knives laid out to be handled. Then Mitsukoshi from a quarter past one — Muromachi 1-4-1, ten until seven, a minute from the Ginza Line: the living and tableware floors for pottery and kitchenware, the food hall last for packaged gifts. It opened as the kimono house Echigoya in 1673, declared itself Japan's first department store in 1904, and set the bronze lions at its door on 1 October 1914 — ordered in England and modelled on the four at the foot of Nelson's Column. If the queue at Tsujihan ran long, the comparison is what goes.
Uchi-Kanda 3-9-6, ground floor of the Okuma building, one minute from Kanda's west exit and part-way down the covered shopping street the plan walks at a quarter past four. Monday to Thursday it runs 10:30 to midnight, so a Wednesday at half past four sits well inside its hours and outside both rushes. Eleven counter seats, no reservations, and — on its current listing — neither cards nor electronic money, which makes the last meal of the trip the one that has to be paid in notes and coins. The order is one regular ramen and one nori-tama, normal noodles and seasoning, oil reduced; the menu snapshot of May 2025 reads ¥980 and ¥1,280 and wants a same-week check. It is Iekei tonkotsu-shoyu, thick and soy-dark, not the pale Hakata bowl. Fifteen minutes is the whole allowance for queueing.
Back at Mitsui at 17:25 for two hours and five minutes: repack, weigh, sort receipts, collect all four cases. Four is the traveller's own count and it is new — the Yamato moves earlier in the trip carried two. Almost nothing about the evening is agreed. The hotel has not confirmed it will hold four cases after a voluntary checkout, or that its lobby can be a packing floor. The 20:15 vehicle for two people and four cases has no model, no luggage fit, no fare and no cancellation terms; rail was dropped for exactly this reason. And ANA runs its own international flights out of both Terminal 2 and Terminal 3, with the terminal shown on Flight Status only close to the day — so “the correct terminal at about nine” is a decision still to be made, not a fact. Two live rules bite inside the packing window: since 1 July 2026 a personal item must fit 40 by 30 by 20 cm, with 10 kg the ceiling for cabin bag and personal item together; since 24 April power banks cannot be checked at all — 160 Wh, two per person, terminals taped. A knife bought at Kiya cannot fly in the cabin either. It has to be inside one of the four.
The fourth Nihonbashi night was last night, and today the hotel stops being a bed and becomes a depot. Checkout is taken early on purpose, at 09:15, and everything after it rests on a permission nobody has yet given: that all four cases can be stored after a voluntary checkout, and that the lobby can be used as a packing floor from 17:25 to 19:30. The booking has been the loose thread of the whole trip — on 25 August the hotel could not find the direct reservation by name and asked for booking-completion evidence, and its agreement to receive the forwarded cases was conditional on that same check. Ask on arrival tomorrow morning, not at 17:25.
¥4,350
TSUJIHAN, PARTY ONE TAKE ¥1,850 · ONE MATSU ¥2,500
¥2,500–3,000
WAIZU, PARTY CASH ONLY · MENU WANTS A RECHECK
¥712
GINZA LINE, PARTY THE ONLY PUBLISHED FARE · TAXIS EXTRA
¥7,562–8,062
KNOWN SPEND, TWO TRAVELLERS THE VAN AND THE SHOPPING HAVE NO FIGURE
IF THE DAY SLIPS — a quarter to eleven at Tsujihan and half past four at Waizu are the frame. A late birthday night → delete Don Quijote outright and go straight to the queue. The queue runs long → the comparison goes first, never the lunch and never the repack. Waizu's line past fifteen minutes → the dashboard's nearby fallback, Ittenmon, has no source record and no verified hours, so eat at the hotel or the airport instead. Whatever happens, the 20:15 vehicle does not move.
Choose exactly one shopping branch: KOMEHYO or Kiya, never both. The departure links stop at the walk, local return and vehicle changes. Haneda stays terminal-neutral until ANA confirms NH871.
JAPAN 2026STOREQUEUECASESFLIGHTOUT AT 09:15, HANDS EMPTYTHE DAY THAT ENDS AT 23:302026
DAY XV · 16 SEPTEMBER · 出発
BUY IT NOW, THEN MAKE IT FIT
Checkout is voluntary at 09:15 — the hotel's own deadline is noon — and all four cases go into storage the moment it is done. What follows is a whole day of shopping and eating with nothing to carry: a discount store at half past nine, a queue at a quarter to eleven, one comparison and never two, a department store until a quarter past four, a bowl of ramen at half past. Then the day turns over. From 17:25 the hotel is a packing floor, at 20:15 there is a vehicle nobody has booked, and at 23:30 a flight that will not wait. The two largest movements of the day — the van and the shopping — have no figure attached to either.
NO QUOTE, NO BOOKING — T-18首都高速 — THE CITY THE LAST DRIVE CROSSESHND BY ABOUT 21:00
NO LIST WRITTEN — T-11ドン・キホーテ銀座本館 — UNDER THE EXPRESSWAY09:30 TO 10:15
HALF PAST NINE · ドン・キホーテ銀座本館
THE ONE SHOP THAT NEVER CLOSES
Ginza 8-chome, in the third block of Ginza Nine, under the expressway and about five minutes on foot from Shimbashi's Ginza exit. The store's own page gives its hours as twenty-four, which makes it the only stop today that cannot be missed by being early or late — and the only one whose door is not the constraint. Forty-five minutes are allowed, 09:30 to 10:15, and the rule is a written list: snacks, consumables and pre-agreed practical items, nothing browsed into. Tax-free is handled in store; there is no car park, which matters little on a day with no car until eight at night. No list exists yet — T-11 closes the snack quantities on 29 August — and after a late birthday night this is the stop the fallback deletes outright, straight on to the queue.
Nihonbashi 3-1-15, a ground-floor room a few minutes south of the bridge. The main store opens at ten and runs to 22:30, and the plan joins the line at about a quarter to eleven — three quarters of an hour after opening, ahead of the office lunch. This is the one meal the traveller asked for by name, which makes it the day's only fixed appointment; the house answers by taking no reservation at any branch, Tokyo, Taipei or Hong Kong, and says so twice on its own front page. One dish in four grades on a card dated April 2025: Ume ¥1,350, Take ¥1,850, Matsu ¥2,500 with uni, Tokujo ¥3,900. The order is one Take and one Matsu, ¥4,350 for two. The bowl is eaten twice — most of it as sashimi over rice, then sea-bream dashi poured over what is left.
WALK-IN ONLY, NEVER HELDぜいたく丼 — THE TOKUJO, ONE GRADE ABOVE THE ORDER10:45 TO 12:15
ONE COMPARISON — T-11 OPEN三越のライオン — AT THE DOOR SINCE 191412:15 TO 16:15
NOON TO TEA TIME · 日本橋室町
A BAG OR A BLADE, AND NEVER BOTH
One comparison stands between the lunch and the department store, and the plan allows exactly one. KOMEHYO at Nihonbashi 2-1-10 opens 10:30 to 19:30, both buys and sells, and handles tax-free; its own page lists 9 and 24 September as closed and not the 16th. Kiya, in business since 1792, keeps its main store on the ground floor of Coredo Muromachi 1, weekdays eleven to seven, with a thousand knives laid out to be handled. Then Mitsukoshi from a quarter past one — Muromachi 1-4-1, ten until seven, a minute from the Ginza Line: the living and tableware floors for pottery and kitchenware, the food hall last for packaged gifts. It opened as the kimono house Echigoya in 1673, declared itself Japan's first department store in 1904, and set the bronze lions at its door on 1 October 1914 — ordered in England and modelled on the four at the foot of Nelson's Column. If the queue at Tsujihan ran long, the comparison is what goes.
Uchi-Kanda 3-9-6, ground floor of the Okuma building, one minute from Kanda's west exit and part-way down the covered shopping street the plan walks at a quarter past four. Monday to Thursday it runs 10:30 to midnight, so a Wednesday at half past four sits well inside its hours and outside both rushes. Eleven counter seats, no reservations, and — on its current listing — neither cards nor electronic money, which makes the last meal of the trip the one that has to be paid in notes and coins. The order is one regular ramen and one nori-tama, normal noodles and seasoning, oil reduced; the menu snapshot of May 2025 reads ¥980 and ¥1,280 and wants a same-week check. It is Iekei tonkotsu-shoyu, thick and soy-dark, not the pale Hakata bowl. Fifteen minutes is the whole allowance for queueing.
WALK-IN ONLY, 15-MINUTE CAP神田駅西口商店街 — THE STREET IT SITS ON16:30 TO 17:15
NOT BOOKED — T-18第3ターミナル — ONE OF THE TWO IT COULD BEABOUT 21:00 TO 21:15
THE EVENING OPERATION · 羽田空港
FOUR CASES, AND NOBODY HAS SAID YES
Back at Mitsui at 17:25 for two hours and five minutes: repack, weigh, sort receipts, collect all four cases. Four is the traveller's own count and it is new — the Yamato moves earlier in the trip carried two. Almost nothing about the evening is agreed. The hotel has not confirmed it will hold four cases after a voluntary checkout, or that its lobby can be a packing floor. The 20:15 vehicle for two people and four cases has no model, no luggage fit, no fare and no cancellation terms; rail was dropped for exactly this reason. And ANA runs its own international flights out of both Terminal 2 and Terminal 3, with the terminal shown on Flight Status only close to the day — so “the correct terminal at about nine” is a decision still to be made, not a fact. Two live rules bite inside the packing window: since 1 July 2026 a personal item must fit 40 by 30 by 20 cm, with 10 kg the ceiling for cabin bag and personal item together; since 24 April power banks cannot be checked at all — 160 Wh, two per person, terminals taped. A knife bought at Kiya cannot fly in the cabin either. It has to be inside one of the four.
The fourth Nihonbashi night was last night, and today the hotel stops being a bed and becomes a depot. Checkout is taken early on purpose, at 09:15, and everything after it rests on a permission nobody has yet given: that all four cases can be stored after a voluntary checkout, and that the lobby can be used as a packing floor from 17:25 to 19:30. The booking has been the loose thread of the whole trip — on 25 August the hotel could not find the direct reservation by name and asked for booking-completion evidence, and its agreement to receive the forwarded cases was conditional on that same check. Ask on arrival tomorrow morning, not at 17:25.
¥4,350
TSUJIHAN, PARTY ONE TAKE ¥1,850 · ONE MATSU ¥2,500
¥2,500–3,000
WAIZU, PARTY CASH ONLY · MENU WANTS A RECHECK
¥712
GINZA LINE, PARTY THE ONLY PUBLISHED FARE · TAXIS EXTRA
¥7,562–8,062
KNOWN SPEND, TWO TRAVELLERS THE VAN AND THE SHOPPING HAVE NO FIGURE
IF THE DAY SLIPS — a quarter to eleven at Tsujihan and half past four at Waizu are the frame. A late birthday night → delete Don Quijote outright and go straight to the queue. The queue runs long → the comparison goes first, never the lunch and never the repack. Waizu's line past fifteen minutes → the dashboard's nearby fallback, Ittenmon, has no source record and no verified hours, so eat at the hotel or the airport instead. Whatever happens, the 20:15 vehicle does not move.
