After the adventures of navigating the public transportation system from the airport to our hotel, we exited the metro to our first real views of Tokyo and it’s beautiful. Everything is calm and clean. The little neighborhood that our hotel is in is just lovely and quiet. The weather is perfectly cool. The air is fresh. Most impressively, there is no smell of urine!
Tokyo Accommodations
When it came to finding accommodations in Japan, that too was a bit overwhelming. Tokyo is just plain massive and we needed to figure out the best place to stay which would be central to the activities we wanted to do in the first couple days of our trip. Also, I did’t want a western style hotel, I wanted something that felt more local, authentic and personal. I opted for the Chuo City area, not because it was lauded as a good place to stay but simply based on proximity to some activities and railways and a highly rated and low cost option was near. I chose Ito Ryokan - a small Japanese guesthouse. We’d have a tatami matted floor with futon beds and a shared bathroom.
The personalized, welcoming service was apparent from the moment we checked in. It was around dinner time and we were a bit hungry but very tired. The host walked around a few blocks with me showing me various restaurants and talking to their waitresses to see if they could take my family or if we needed reservations. We found a nice BBQ style restaurant and I retrieved my family and came back and they welcomed then with open arms. We grilled our own wagyu beef and ordered some sides. I am still impressed by the kids willingness to eat with chopsticks and not make a big deal out of it.
The walls in Japanese houses are known for being thin and we can even hear everything that is said on the streets below. In most places of the world, this would interrupt your sleep for sure, however, amazingly everything is so quiet that we didn’t hear a peep all night. You can hear a person even talking with a quiet voice outside and there was nothing all night that woke us up. We got a relatively solid night of rest - with the help of some sleep aids - and were ready for a full day of exploring the next day! It started with a traditional breakfast prepared by the guesthouse host.
A Day in Tokyo
We planned for a day out and about on the east side of Tokyo - with a plan to hit the west side on our last day of the trip. Once we had all of our subway passes ironed out, we were able to very quickly jump from one neighborhood to the next. With the help of Google maps throughout - it worked like charm!
First Stop: Senso-Ji Shrine
Upon arrival to the Seno-Ji Shrine area, we stepped out of the metro to the bustling market of the Nakamise-dori street. I know this is a tourist attraction area but the food and the shops are quintessential what you expect to see when coming to Japan. We are fairly early in the day and all the market stalls are not yet open but it’s filling up with guests. We are surprised at the number of people at each of the activities throughout the Monday - and only learned later that it was a Japanese public holiday. Which I think explains the crowd sizes and families out and about.
The shrine itself had many interesting fortune and wish related cultural activities. For example, shaking a canister and getting a stick out of it which had a number which corresponded to a drawer which you could get your fortune out of - if it was good, take it with you, if it was bad, tie it to a near by rod and leave it there. A lot of incense in the air.
The temple and pagoda area were immaculately kept and had beautiful gardens in the surrounding areas.
Second Stop: AquaLand and Tokyo Dome
With kids in tow, we find it helpful to mix in activities which we know the kids will look forward to. They enjoy seeing the temples a bit but compared to a rollercoaster in center city, it’s hard to top.
Tokyo Dome is home to the Tokyo Giants baseball team and has Hall of Fame museum which hosts the 2023 World Championship trophy and tributes to some of the great Japanese players in the US Major League Baseball.
AquaLand is an open amusement park where you can pay by ride and is mixed in with the local mall and other attractions open to the public. We all did the Big O Ferris wheel and some of us rode the Thunder Dolphin rollercoaster - bigger and faster than most we have ridden in the states - while some of us (ok, just me) went for a stroll through the mall. Win-win. It was about an hour wait to get on the coaster - probably impacted by the holiday as this seemed to be more of a local hang out than a tourist attraction.
Most places we have seen have had interesting foodie options. We have tried to stick with smaller portions and less sit down restaurants so we can try as much as possible. In this case, we tried a hot dog on a crunchy bun and done up in several ingredients that I’m not sure what they all were but one was mustard. There has to be someone who has done research on hot dog culture throughout the world. We see them in most countries that we go to and always with a unique local twist!
Third Stop: Ginza Shopping District
The center for big shopping and all the Japanese name brands we use every day. We picked a few to explore their dedicated stores. Seiko watches, Nissan, and Sony. The formula 1 race car was on display which sparked some interest and we watched a clip on the TVs in the Sony store featuring a fairly recent American movie about bombing the Japanese - interesting choice of film. We also did some chilling on a pedestrian street and people watching. All in all, probably could have skipped this stop.
Fourth Stop: teamLab Borderless digital art museum and Tokyo Tower
One of the activities I knew we had to book in advance was the teamLab Borderless museum. It was sold out when we got there for our scheduled time. This was definitely enjoyed by all, even though the kids had an immediate reaction to the word ‘museum’ which was not positive.
Things you can’t grasp from the pictures in the spa-like serene music and the smell of flowers - also like a spa. So although there were a decent number of people there, body odor was not to be found. Also in typical Japanese fashion - it was relatively quiet throughout the experience.
The kids in particularly loved the activity of coloring their own sea creature and then seeing it come alive on the walls of a massive aquarium of digital sea creatures.
Afterwards, it was a quick walk over to the Tokyo tower which was lit up by this point in the day, as it gets dark around 4:30 pm this time of year. We opted to not go up the tower as we were planning to go up the SkyTree. But we did grab some abnormally long French fries at a food truck area under the tower.
Fifth Stop: Tokyo SkyTree
It’s been a long day, but we have one more stop that I booked tickets for just a day in advance, to go to the top of the SkyTree. It’s the second tallest tower in the world - falling short of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. There were of course lines, even with scheduled times to go up, but they moved rather quickly. More quickly than the Eiffel Tower queues at least! We opted to go to the highest point we could (of course) which was 350m. The views of Tokyo were stunning as the city goes on forever.
We are of course a bit beat at this point, about 7:30 pm. We had back to the hotel and the kids pick up a McDonalds hamburger on the way. As they chill in the room with the burgers, we grabbed some $5 ramen at a small restaurant across the street. Definitely felt like a true local experience!
On our way out of town the next morning, we ended up seeing the Imperial gardens, or at least part of it. We hadn’t arranged the necessary tour to enter into the main gated areas - the kids had voted that stop down in the original itinerary building - but it was lovely to explore the perimeter while we waited for our train.
Next Up: Kyoto
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