Tokyo
Transit
Public transit might not seem particularly interesting, but in Japan, it is a work of art. Non-residents are
allowed to purchase a JR pass, which lets you take the high speed rail all over Japan for seven days for around $270 USD.
This is how we got to all of the cities we visited. The high speed rail is amazing - we got from Osaka to Tokyo
in under three hours. The stations have a wide selection of food to purchase before the trip. We went for
the bento boxes.
The public transit within the cities is also superb. The trains in Osaka and Tokyo were always on time, and
Google Maps told you the car number to board for the easiest transfer or exit. In the rare situation when
we weren't sure how to get from point A to point B, the staff was helpful and friendly, and usually spoke some English.
Plus, many of the stops let out into large underground shopping centers, where you could purchase goods, or just
see what there was to see.
Tokyo Dome
We arrived in Tokyo in the early afternoon, checked into our AirBnb, and promptly took the subway to the Tokyo Dome to meet some friends, Bill and Russell, who happened to be in Tokyo at the same time as us. We also wanted to see if we could snag tickets for the Giants baseball game that night. To our surprise, Tokyo Dome was much more than a baseball stadium! There were restaurants, shops, a roller coaster, and a plaza. We got dinner at a Chinese restaurant with Bill and Russell, then went to buy tickets. Unbeknownst to us, the captain of the Giants, Shinnosuke Abe had announced his retirement only days beforehand, and this was his final game. Tickets were sold out long before we got there, but we got to watch the game on a screen in the plaza with a crowd of locals as Abe hit a home run and the Giants won.
teamLab Borderless
teamLab Borderless was one of the few activities on this trip that we pre-purchased tickets for. It's basically a museum of light art. In the main rooms, the exhibits are all around you on every wall and floor. Some rooms are different than the rest: you might find a room with a rock in the middle that looks like there's water pouring over it, or another that seems to be the beginning of a rave. Some exhibits only allow a certain number of people in at a time, so you have to wait in line. This museum was impressive, but is overhyped. If it was less crowded, it would have been easy to let yourself fall into the vibe, absorbing all the exhibits surrounding you. As it was, you were pulled out of this trance every time a person walked in front of you, which was every few seconds. The more popular exhibits turn out great pictures, but the lines can be between 20 minutes and an hour and a half. My favorite part was the tea room, where you get tea, and the light makes it look like theres a flower blooming in it.
Fuunji Ramen
We met Bill and Russell for dinner at Fuunji Ramen, said to be the best ramen in Tokyo. Many ramen places, including this one, use a vending machine system: you walk in, choose your food on a vending machine, get a ticket from the machine, and then wait in line for a spot to sit. When one opens up, you take it and hand the ticket to the servers, who make and serve your ramen. This isn't a place to relax with friends over a nice meal - it's a place to get in, enjoy the food, and get out. But while it may not be the dining experience you're used to, it's certainly worth having. I fully believe that the rumors are true: this is the best ramen in Tokyo.
Chiyoda City
We spent one afternoon wandering around Chiyoda City, which contains Tokyo Station, the Imperial Palace, and poshy business district, Marunouchi. We took the subway to Tokyo Station, which has a distinctly European look, especially compared to the Japanese architecture everywhere else. We bought some fancy powdered green tea from a shop in Marunouchi, then walked through the parks to the Imperial Palace - a castle in the middle of a city. Like so many Japanese monuments, the castle has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times, the most recent being after WWII. The inner grounds of the palace are not generally open to the public without a guide, as this is where the Imperial Family resides.
Arcades
We set aside an entire day to visit arcades in Ikebukuro with with Bill and Russell. But first, we spent an hour at The Bic Store looking through their huge selection of Metal Earth puzzles and nano blocks. (The Bic Store is really more like a giant Walmart, but they have an entire floor dedicated to video games, toys, and puzzles, which is what sparked our interest.) Afterwards, the real fun started. We went to Taito Station, Sega, and Round One arcades to see what games they had. All of them were multi-level and had at least one floor dedicated to claw games. (These seemed very popular all throughout Japan and Taiwan.) We mainly played rhythm games. There were some that I was familiar with, like Dance Dance Revolution and Dance Rush, but games involving musical instruments seemed more popular with the locals. The main ones used keyboards, Taiko drums, and DJ mixers. I got really into MaiMai, which Bill introduced me to. We also played life-sized Mario Kart, pong, the Jurassic Park shooter game, a game where you play as a gundam, and more. We chose to skip the sections that were filled with photo booths and virtual off-track betting, but Bill and Russell had some fun with the casino portion of the arcades, where you insert coins into a machine in the hopes that your coins will push the others, resting precariously on the edge of a platform, down into the prize slot.
Rotating Sushi
At some point we needed to refuel, so we went to a rotating sushi bar near the arcades. We were warned that these places didn't serve the tastiest food, but the experience was worth it. Each piece of sushi is on a different colored plate, and you grab the dishes that look good to you, or you can request others from the chef. You keep the plates you eat from, and pay at the end based on the colors.
Lomanesque
On one of our first nights in Tokyo, we went to Ikebukuro to try to find a Jimmy Page-themed bar that Kevin's friend, Chris, had recommended. We wandered for an hour or two in the general vicinity of where Chris vaguely remembered the bar to be. While searching, we saw pieces of the Fukuro Festival, where shopkeepers in Ikebukuro dress in traditional garb, dance, and carry thrones around. Eventually, we gave up on the Jimmy Page bar, got some ramen, and went back to our AirBnB. A few days later, after visiting some arcades, we decided to search for the bar again, this time with Bill and Russell. We found it! It was called Lomanesque, and didn't give off a Jimmy Page vibe at all, but he was on the sign, and they had a lot of weird, rare Jimmy Page memorabilia, like his old high school yearbook. We were the only ones in the bar (a theme of this trip), so we tried some Japanese whiskey and had a great time hanging out.
Happy Soul Bar
After Lomanesque, we decided to try another bar. We stopped at one in Ikebukuro that had live penguins, but decided that we didn't want to pay a cover. We went back to Shinjuku, where we were staying, and which has a popular night scene. All of the ground level bars charged cover and were filled with tourists. (We were in Japan during the Rugby World Cup, which attracted a lot of foreign rugby fans.) We eventually tried a bar called Happy Soul Bar, which was up three flights of metal stairs, and was entirely empty. We drank and chatted with the bartender, who worked full time at a video game company and visited the US regularly. He played whatever music we requested, so we listened to a couple of albums, then called it a night.
Yoyogi Park & Meiji Shrine
The next day, we spent the afternoon in one of Tokyo's largest parks, Yoyogi Park. It's huge and has a lot of tree cover, allowing you to temporarily forget that you're in a big city. It was beautiful. We sat by the water for a bit, then wandered around until we came upon Meiji Shrine. The shrine was completed in 1920, but, like so many Japanese monuments, was destroyed in WWII and had to be rebuilt. Outside the shrine, there are hundreds of colorfuly decorated sake and wine barrels, symbolically honoring the gods. Inside the shrine, we were lucky enough to be onlookers of a traditional Japanese and Scottish wedding ceremony. Afterwards, we exited the shrine and the park next to the construction of the Japanese National Stadium, which was being built for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Harajuku
Harajuku is known for it's kawaii culture, which means that the main street, Takeshita, was mostly filled with shops where you could purchase clothes that would make you look like a doll. While walking around, we passed a storefront that seemed to be rented out to promote Samsung's new phone. We were treated to a 4D virtual reality whitewater rafting trip, as well as some games and a photobooth experience for free, so we could try out the new technology for ourselves.
Shibuya
According to the Internet, one of the must-sees in Tokyo is Shibuya Crossing: a four-way intersection with an enormous amount of people. We decided to check it out. It was underwhelming...maybe it would be more interesting if we didn't already live in a big city. But there were other things to see in Shibuya too. While in the area, we passed the Disney store, which is an ominous looking black castle that is the antithesis of Disney. We grabbed a snack of shirasu (the weirdest food I ate on the trip) and okonomiyaki, then went bowling at EST to pass time while waiting for a dinner reservation. Kevin won.
Kaikaya by the Sea
That night, we had a reservation at Kaikaya by the Sea, a seafood restaurant that had been recommended to me by a friend of a friend. If I had one recommendation to give for Japan, it would be to go to this restaurant. We had nine amazing courses plus barley tea and a large portion of sake for about $60 USD a person. The meal started with a tofu dish with some sort of sauce and beef carpaccio, followed by a sushi sampler and shrimp tempura. The main courses were a tuna spare rib (which is actually tuna face), whole snapper, and beef that you cook yourself. This is followed by a soup that comes out with dry ingredients, and to which you add broth yourself. For dessert, you'll have cherry blossom ice cream covered in milk.
Asakusa
Asakusa wasn't on our original list of things to do in Japan - we only decided to go there to see a popular shrine when we had exhausted our list of planned activities. We're so glad we did. There was much more in Asakusa than just the shrine. The streets were lined with shops and vendors selling everything from food to clothes to knick knacks to furniture. Several of the streets had a glass roof, making it feel like you were in an outdoor shopping mall. The shrine was also a unique experience due to the number of locals who were there burning incense and saying prayers. And Asakusa is only a 20-minute walk from the Tokyo Skytree, the world's second tallest structure at 2,080 feet. The lobby of the Skytree has a handy sign telling you different monuments that you'll be able to see from the top, based on the visibility for that day. On a good day, you can see Mount Fuji, but due to poor visibility, we would have MAYBE been able to see Asakusa Shrine, where we had just walked from, so we decided not to go up.
Robot Restaurant
How can one describe Tokyo's Robot Restaurant?
Bizarre? Energetic? Japanese. It's a live show (parade?) following no particular plot on a small stage between
audience seats. It's like if Power Rangers met Jurassic Park met vampires met multi-culturalism
met fish, all in a Medieval Times-esque setting. The show begins with floats with people on drums, then somehow transitions to robot monsters and
robot dinosaurs fighting.
That was followed by dancing trees and vampires (which might have been particular to the Halloween show we attended,
but who really knows). All of the sudden, Michael
Jackson was playing, and each person in the cast was representing a different country and dancing together. Then
there was a chicken robot and a whale robot, and the cast was dressed as fish. What just happened?
(You can pay extra for dinner with the show. Don't bother. The food isn't great, and you don't want to look away
from the show for even a second.)