Japan (Day 10 – 12) – Tokyo – Part 1

After a week and a half of traveling all around the Central/Southern parts of Japan, I finally found myself in the gigantic metropolis that is Tokyo!

—– Day 10 —–

After a fair distance of traveling (almost 800km by bullet train), I arrived at my hostel and wasn’t left with a whole lot of daylight to play with, given that I arrived a little later in the day. Luckily, unlike pretty much all of the other cities that I had been to so far, Tokyo has a well established night-life. So, despite being a little exhausted I set out to find some dinner. Up until now I had avoided all American chain restaurants, not wanting to miss any opportunity I had to eat some local Japanese food. However, there is one restaurant I came to Japan knowing I wanted to go to, given how notoriously popular it is here:

KFC! Haha in all honesty it has been so long since I’ve eaten KFC in the states I didn’t really know how to compare it, but it was good stuff. KFC is surprisingly popular in Japan. Somehow, and I haven’t dug very deep into the history, KFC established itself as the go-to place for Christmas meals. Don’t get me wrong, their chicken is good, but stills seems like a strange place to want to go to on Christmas, haha.

I then quickly headed to one of the parts of Japan I had heard had a busier nightlife, Shibuya. I’m not sure where most of the iconic neon light filled Japan photos come from, but Shibuya could have definitely been the place for more than a few.

While walking around I decided to go in this Mega (literally) Don Quijote which I had heard about before coming to Japan. I would sorta compare it to a Walmart, but a little more eclectic. They had everything from from every sort of Studio Ghibli puzzle, to tons of Halloween/Cosplay costumes, to sex toys (O.o). Kinda fun to walk around, even bought myself a whole bunch of different flavors of Kit-Kats there as well!

After wandering around a bit more, I made my way back to my hostel where they were having a live music night which actually turned out a fairly large crowd! Luckily my bed was a few floors up so I still managed to sleep.

—– Day 11 —–

The next day was a super fun one for me. I was a little overwhelmed by the size of Tokyo and wasn’t exactly sure what to tackle next. So, I decided to essentially do a little scavenger hunt. Anyone who knows me personally knows I’m a big fan of Japanese animation, specifically directors like Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Hosada. One of my all-time favorites is “Your Name” by Makoto Shinkai. The movie has scenes from actual locations all over Tokyo and other parts of Japan. So, I figured as a great first activity and a way to get around the city, I was going to go take pictures at all the locations from the movie I could find! I’ll post a link to the website I used, and you can compare my work to the movies!

Link to Your Name location map w/ pictures

I also ran into a few other fans doing the same thing as me which I thought was awesome.

As I finished up the last of my scavenger hunt, I put myself on a route over to Shinjuku, which I was fairly close to. On the walk over I found myself right next to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Although not originally on my plan, I decided to pay the small entrance fee (like $2) and take a look inside. The entire park was absolutely gorgeous, one of the most beautiful parks I’ve ever been to. I’m terrible at describing these things so here are some pictures that hopefully at least do partial justice.

So green!! Love it.

After arriving in Shinjuku, I found myself near another little outdoor food market and decided to grab a bite and then headed around to explore the city.

The Robot Restaurant was a fun one to run in to. Although I didn’t go inside, the decorations on the building were enough to set it apart. All in all, Shinjuku was the tech/electronics/nerd hub one might expect it to be.

The day culminated in attending a shrine festival. One thing I was a little bummed about my timing of traveling to Japan is that I had just missed a whole bunch of the beginning of fall festivals. Whenever I looked online, all of the big events were like 1 or 2 weeks before I got there. I managed to find this one a little bit out of my way, but I had been told that shrine festivals were a must-have experience. So I took the train ride and walked the mile and a half to get there.

The festival took place on the temple grounds. Almost like a mini-fair, people set up booths all over the place with all sorts of food and little goodies, which I definitely took advantage of. The entire festival spanned a couple of days, but each morning/night there seemed to be some sort of significant event. The night I was there they put on a couple performances, one with some young shrine maidens performing a classical dance, and the other I think depicting some of the spirits of the shrine? I honestly don’t know much about it, and any signs I could find were all in Japanese, almost no English. Still definitely a dive into another part of Tokyo culture, though I wish I understood more of the significance.

—– Day 12 —–

Sunday was a bit of a let down. I had decided that today was going to be my Studio Ghibli Museum day, something I had really been looking forward to. I took a little detour on my way over to stop by Roppongi Hills, what seemed like kinda the uppity part of town, lots of American restaurants and shopping malls, to make the mandatory stop by Hard Rock Cafe to grab my pins.

This is also where I had my first live sighting of Mario and his gang.

Haha, if I had been with a group that would have been on the top of my list of things to do, though now I believe it’s been shut down due to copyright infringement, RIP…

I then headed a little bit out of the city to hit the museum.

Unfortunately, and this is where my day went downhill, you have to buy your tickets in advance to get into the museum. And by advance, I mean like many months in advance. I went online to check out where I could buy them and they were sold out for at least the next 3 months. Needless to say my heart was broken… :’(.

Haha not necessarily because of that, I decided to call the day a bit early to rest my feet after the busy day yesterday and hung out in the hostel, so not much else happened on Sunday.

All-in-all, I had a wonderful start to Tokyo!

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