Tokyo - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
BAAAAANAAAAANAAAAA!! No trip without the Minions in my head :D!! #minion #dispicableme #tokyo #tokio #banana #commercial
A day without a minion is a bad day!! #minion #dispicableme #japan #tokyo #tokio #beedobeedo
When you wanna eat fruits in Tokio, you need to go to "Takano Fruits Parlor"....orgasm inclusive... a lot of them, these fruits where epic!! #tokio #tokyo #fruits #takanofruitsparlor #takano
Vending machines with cool drinks all over here, this is so awesome and there are some real funky drinks in it ^_^.... and you should look close to some of the ads :D .... #tokio #tokyo #drinks #vendingmachines #tomyleejones #asakusa #cooldrinks
Japan 2020 - Day 1
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Arriving in Tokyo and running away to Hakone, hot springs really help with jet lag.
If you haven't seen the previous post check out the Prelude.
Monday 24th February 2020
Tokyo
Our flight arrived at 6:50 AM, our first sign of coronavirus prevention was a man standing behind an infrared camera to check people's temperature as they went through to get their passports checked.
Oli’s friend Hiroshi met with us at the airport to give us a lift to his place where we would be staying that week, again to save a bit of cash, but it was a brief stop after a catch up we would be off travelling immediately.
We had originally planned to go to Hakone with Hiroshi but he had to get ready for his upcoming wedding so instead he took us to lunch at Tokyo Station our first proper meal in Japan was Ramen! Which it turns out is good for any meal, breakfast/lunch/dinner/after drinks before stumbling home.
Hiroshi pointed us in the right direction and we caught a train to Hakone where we would spend our first night.
Hakone
A running theme in this trip is not doing much in the way of research before going to places, partly due to not wanting to plan too much in advance and experience things as they come and also being free to do things that looked interesting when we found them.
It was this that brought our first surprise of Hakone, there’s a famous anime set here, Evangelion. The only trouble was neither I nor Oli have seen it so the map of the local area with screenshots from the show were lost on us, but all that means is we get to see the real life version before watching the show and say “I recognise that, I’ve been there.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough we committed our next sin of not having change for the coin lockers to store our luggage, fresh off the plane with our currency we had nothing but notes and no easy way to change them we found a nearby vending machine which refused to take our money, we struggled for a minute before a helpful Japanese lady came and pointed out that the machine wasn’t able to give change, presumably because everyone else had been doing the same thing.
We got our drinks, stashed our luggage and proceeded to explore the local town as we couldn’t check in to our ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel) yet. It appears to be a popular destination for tourists, I was worried that as it wasn’t a major city the folks there wouldn’t understand our lacklustre Japanese and the inevitable reverting to English and pointing at things but we had no issues.
We spent about 40 minutes walking around Hakone then when we were ready to check in we retrieved our luggage and trundled up the hill. We discovered a spoopy tunnel, which may have been our first encounter with the spectre thief, is it a ghost who steals things or someone who steals ghosts or it could be someone who steals ghosts who steal things like some sort of ghost police.
The area is known for its onsen (natural hot springs) and the ryokan we are staying in has its own onsen but not only that some of the rooms have private onsen… for couples, we have booked just such a room. This allows us to practise before embarrassing ourselves in front of any Japanese folk that may be using the public onsen.
The ryokan has tatami (Mats made of straw although modern mats have woodchip or polystyrene at their core) on the floor and futons to sleep on, so your living room doubles as a bedroom, there’s no kotatsu sadly but it has air conditioning which was greatly appreciated as it was still quite chilly outside, the weather in the UK had been getting milder but in Japan were thrown back in to winter somewhat.
After trying out our private onsen we decided to also try out the futons and had a nap, this seemed to work out well as we woke up in time for a late dinner and were still tired enough to get to sleep later.
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Japan 2020 - Day 2
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Our Hakone adventures continue.
Tuesday 25th February 2020
Hakone
Our second day in Japan we had a traditional breakfast which included lots of new and strange looking foods. Helpfully they have a laminated card at the table telling you what everything is, I had fun trying to remove all the bones from a fish and drinking an egg with something mixed in with it.
We are headed off on the circular trail around Hakone that includes buses, trains, cable cars and boats that look like pirate ships, but first we are headed up Mt. Kintoki. Back into town we went to store our luggage at the station, purchased our Hakone Free Pass, then took a bus up the hill and found the Mt. Kintoki Hiking Trail.
We found a shrine, as it was my first one I wanted to make a donation for a fortune, although I couldn’t read it, google translate showed some good luck in there so I took that to mean it was a good one, Oli got one too which was only minimal luck, if they had been bad luck we supposed to tie them up there.
The trail was made up of many many steps we met quite a few people walking down the mountain, everyone was very friendly a quick “konichiwa” and a bow much like a friendly “mornin’” to your fellow brit it was very welcoming, that is until we heard loud noises sort of like thunder or perhaps something was awakening from below the ground…
Although it was a cloudy day we got a good view of Mt Fuji at the top, we had brought some snacks with us from the 7-11 at the bottom of the trail but we couldn’t resist getting some hot food from the shack at the top, the menu consisted of various noodle based dishes, we ordered our curry noodles from the lovely old lady who seemed to run the place, we ate while friendly locals made small talk “curry noodles” and “chopsticks” perhaps they were impressed by our skills with the utensils, we did our best to respond in Japanese “Hashi” I replied while gesturing with my chopsticks, they asked where we were from so we could break out one of the few phrases we could remember “Watashi wa Igirisu-jin desu” I’m from England.
After they had left the lovely lady who had brought us our food made small talk with us, we expressed our enjoyment of the food “oishi” delicious, and we got given sweets and crackers to take with us on our trek, she informed us it was her birthday so Oli began singing Happy Birthday and I joined in before realising we didn’t know her name, this was swiftly covered up with another line of “Happy Birthday” she seemed to enjoy it anyway and we got some more freebies by way of a postcard.
We thanked her for everything and set back off down the hill by a slightly different route and caught a bus to the next part of our trip, one of the trains was out of action due to a landslide but we got to the end station to get the replacement bus but we discovered that we’d spent too long eating noodles and we would not be able to get back as the last cable car was going or had gone already, as they’re still on their winter schedule it stops earlier than in the summer, reluctantly we get back on the bus toward the station to grab our luggage and head back to Tokyo, The Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park will have to be added to the list for the next visit.
Tokyo
Our first few days in Tokyo we were staying with Hiroshi and Aiko, Hiroshi and Oli are old friends.
We made it back to their place around 8pm where we had dinner. For Hiroshi’s wedding reception he had picked up a Nintendo 64, I was more than happy to help test it out with a bit of Mario Kart and Bomberman.
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Japan 2020 - Day 3
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Our first full day in Tokyo, we got lost on public transport and went up a tall building, find out all about it below!
Wednesday 26th February 2020
Tokyo
Originally we were supposed to be visiting the Ghibli museum but they had decided to close in order to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.
Instead we went for a more traditional museum, we headed over to Ueno park where all the museums seem to live. We walk through the park first admiring some plum/cherry blossom which is conveniently located next to a designated smoking spot.
We found Ueno Park Boat Dock in Shinobazu Pond with some colourful characters in the form of bird boats with bow ties, regrettably as it was technically still winter you could not take one for a spin.
We did start a bit late today so we only had time for one place, the Tokyo National Museum. I think I would have preferred a less art and more history but it was still very interesting to look at. We were fortunate to see it at this stage as a few days later it was closed to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.
We got booted out and headed over to Skytree, on the way there we were on the lookout for food. We found that at Ueno Station there was a mall/food court with many places to eat including a vegan place called T’s TanTan the food was good but some of the decoration needed some work, the “vegan” books on the wall turned out to not be genuine.
When it came time to leave it we were denied exit from the food court, turns out we had entered a part of the station but as we didn’t want to catch a train from this side we had to pay a small fee to use the food court before we were allowed out.
It definitely took some time to get used to the underground trains in Tokyo, Google Maps was ok at getting you from A to B but there’s another app called Japan Transit Planner which gives you options for travel like shortest or cheapest journey although it lacks a map which means you need to look up the names of where you are and where you want to go so you end up flicking between the two to work it out. You can also tell it if you are using the JR Pass so it will prefer putting you on those trains, we only had a 7 day pass and couldn’t start using it yet.
The app however did lead us astray with no map to show the journey. We ended up taking a 7.5 mile 38 minute train and we missed our stop as I thought there were two stations for Skytree which there are but this train only stopped at one of them.
If I had seen it on a map I think I would’ve settled for having to change at Asakusa Station for the much shorter journey. In the end we walked from Asakusa Station to Skytree, where we got to see the Ashai golden poo to make up for our extended journey.
Skytree itself is a broadcasting and observation tower, you can pay to go to the top or you can do as we did and head to a bar in the Tokyo Skytree East Tower, where for the price of a beer you can sit and enjoy the view and you get to drink beer!
At the bottom of Skytree there is a large mall with over 300 shops, but only 1 I really cared about, the Pokemon Center. I was on the lookout for exclusive merch but I assumed that this was just a smaller version of the main store so I didn’t get very much this time. We also found a Ghibli store which partly made up for not being able to go to the Ghibli museum.
Finally we went up the tower to 天空LOUNGE TOP of TREE to get our beer and admire the view.
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Japan 2020 - Day 4
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Sightseeing shrines and temples in Northern Tokyo, then shopping in Akihabara.
Thursday 27th February 2020
Tokyo
Asakusa
The next day it was time for more history only this time it was outside and it was looking at old buildings. We went to Asakusa (浅草) and started off admiring the Kaminarimon Gate (浅草寺 風雷神門) leading up to the Sensō-ji (浅草寺) Temple and the Pagoda. To get from the gate and the temple you walk through the Nakamise-dori Shopping Street (仲見世商店街) we wondered part way down but decided to get some food first.
Apparently we went to a Unagi restaurant Funachu although I don’t recall having eel. Then it was back to the shopping street leading up to the Hōzōmon Gate (宝蔵門) which is just before the Temple. Here people posed in front of the gate all dressed up, I now know that you can rent kimono to wear so I would love to do this next time.
To the left of the gate is the Five-Storied Pagoda (浅草寺 五重塔) and after passing through the gate we finally reached Sensō-ji Temple
The old and the new, Tokyo Skytree towers over the skyline in the distance.
Akihabara
It may sound silly but I was excited to check out Japanese shops, one that had been recommended to me was called Bic Camera.
It’s a big department store that sells everything including but not limited to, fancy toilet seats, fancy ceiling lights, video games, label makers, rice cookers and big televisions. I didn’t actually buy anything but it gave me some good ideas of what I would like to get in the future now that I know it’s available.
As we were in Akihabara that can mean only one thing, retro video games! First up was Super Potato, as it has become the most famous retro store it’s also become the most expensive but still worth checking out, they didn’t seem to have any of the items that I was most interested in and flipping through games trying to work out what they are by the picture was very time consuming, another lesson learnt I need to know the exact title in Japanese so I can read it off of the spine for cd/dvd games and maybe even a picture of the front cover/label.
I found another store down the road which did have some of the bits that I needed including the disk system game that I had been after Doki Doki Panic (released as Super Mario Bros 2 in the west) there was another store I wanted to visit but I had lost track of time and it was now 8 pm and the store had closed so I would need to return another day.
I arranged to meet back up with Oli but not before another exciting stop for me in the form of BookOff, from my research this was an second hand shop equivalent to CEX in the UK, here I found another few to tick off like a Wii U, a drum controller and 2 Taiko no Tatsujin games. I was worried I had spent too long in there but Oli was running late too so it worked out fine, I took a train and met him back at the station near Hiroshi’s place and we stayed in for food.
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Japan 2020 - Day 5
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Our continuing Tokyo travels take us to a dark warehouse, an abandoned museum and some tasty beverages.
Friday 28th February 2020
Tokyo
Today was out last day staying with Hiroshi and Aiko, they were getting married on Saturday and we needed to get out of their way.
Aomi, Koto City
We headed out early to catch the train to Aomi (青海) an area of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay. To get there we travelled across the Rainbow Bridge which is 798m long! At night the towers that support the bridge are lit up in rainbow colours.
After getting off the train we enter an area known as Palette Town (not to be confused with Pallet Town from Pokémon) we walk between two buildings, into the circular area in the bottom right of the picture above, the VenusFort Venice-themed mall on the left and the Toyota City Showcase on the right. We were meeting up with Oli's parents, they had just gotten back to Tokyo from sightseeing elsewhere in the country.
We had some time to kill so we had a quick look at what shops and eateries the mall had to offer but decided to head in to the Toyota City Showcase, I'm not really in to cars but they did have some interesting exhibits of what they though cars might look like in the future (with jet packs... what do you mean I already made this joke 🤫) You can see more about it here.
We walked through the Toyota City Showcase and on the other side we found the Daikanransha (大観覧車) Ferris Wheel, Oli suggested we ride it, I was initially hesitate because it seemed expensive but I realised that I was on Holiday and I should try and experience things if I can.
We opted for one of the smaller 360° view cars and got some lovely views, the sky was nice and clear and it did the job of killing some time while we waited.
When Oli's parents arrived we headed in to teamLab Borderless, I won't be able to do it justice here, it's a visual and auditory experience, when you enter you get lost in a giant maze and lose track of time much like Ikea.
It's mostly dark except for projectors shining lights and imagery on to the walls, in other areas LED strips hang from the ceiling, these were controlled by the visitors from an app, to add a bit of interactivity.
On the left is a sign showing different kanji's and the pictographs and on the right the corresponding symbols appear in the app.
This is a great place to come and take some beautiful selfies, though beware some areas feature a mirrored floor, so skirts may not be the best choice of clothing. Although these areas are often in side rooms so you don't have to go in if you don't want to.
We had been in here for awhile and I was starting to get hungry, I left Oli and his parents and decided to head over to the food court of the mall next door. I didn't take any pictures here, it looks just like a mall food court with Venice theming and lots of Japanese food.
Just a short walk from the mall in Palette Town is the Unicorn Gundam Statue (実物大ユニコーンガンダム立像) I don't anything about Gundam but it was impressive to see such a big structure just standing outside I had to stop by to admire it.
II had hoped to visit The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (日本科学未来館) but unfortunately it was closed from today until 17th March 2020, I'm sure it'll all have blown over by then.
I met back up with Oli and we headed back to Hiroshi and Aiko's place, we had to change at Tokyo station so took the opportunity to stop off at the Pokémon Center Tokyo DX (ポケモンセンタートウキョーDX) here I picked up an squishy Oddish and a Snivy plushie. There's also a café where you can enjoy cute Pokémon themed food and drinks, but we didn't try it this time.
It took until the last day we were staying with Hiroshi and Aiko for me to check out their nearest BookOff, it was a short walk away from the station, practically on the way to their apartment. There I purchased a Wii Remote, the idea being I could use it with the Wii U I had bought to test out the Taiko no Tatsujin Drum Controller before I took it home.
Hiroshi and Aiko kindly let us store some luggage at their place so we could carry on our journey across Japan with just one suitcase each, before we left they took us out to a local restaurant.
We met up with Oli's parents again and visited Junpei (じゅん平) for some okonomiyaki, Hiroshi took care of ordering for us all which was nice not to have to worry about. After the meal Hiroshi and Aiko left as they had a busy day tomorrow. We stayed in the restaurant for another drink, Oli's dad wanted Sake 🍶 but was having some trouble communicating with the waitress, I watched her trying to work out what drink he wanted for a moment. She was asking questions which didn't seem to relate to sake, I suddenly remembered that the word Sake just means alcohol and that in the west the drink we know as Sake is called Nihonshu (日本酒) with this information we were now able to narrow down the choices from alcohol to a specific beverage.
After our drinks we hopped on the train to Shibuya, the station was being renovated and it was quite confusing to navigate after escaping we then found road works blocking our way so it took us a little longer to get to our AirBNB.
Once there we then had the confusion of working out how to get in to the building, but Oli found the code for the door and we got inside. The small apartment featured two sofa beds, a small kitchen, a washing machine a small shower room and an even smaller room with the toilet. While seated on the toilet you could reach out and touch the wall in front of you.
Tomorrow was the big day for Hiroshi and Aiko, I was invited to the wedding reception in the evening, so I had big plans to explore Akihabara on my own.
◀ Previous | Next ▶
rosalía in tokyo, photographed by yuri horie
Hyakkimaru and Tahomaru, Tokyo vibes~
day 4
30 days writing challenge
day 4: places you want to visit
Everybody knows what I’m going to scream when asked this question; Japan! My number 1 favourite country. I’ve always dreamt of living there since I was very young. As you may or may not know, I'm an otaku and crazy about everything in Japan. 🇯🇵 My dream country.
Next is Korea; I’ve recently started staning the best boy band; BTS and became an ARMY. So the desire to go there is rising with time and needless to say, Korea is a beautiful place.
After that, I want to go to Paris; city of love, I've always wanted to go there too. Whether it be just me, myself or with my friends or with my special someone. It doesn’t really matter, the place is already romantic in its own ways. And then, the big apple, and many more. As I stated in my previous posts, my dream is to travel around the world but these are the places I want to go the most and first.
I hope whoever’s reading a great day! Spreading love around.
~Melody~
