Due to the really good exchange rates, we decided to go to Japan again. This time we chose to spend 5 days in Tokyo, and then fly from Haneda into Fukuoka to then make our way around Kyushu by train before flying home out of Oita.
Here’s a recap of our Tokyo portion of the trip.
Day 1
Metropolitan Government Building: this is easily accessible by subway getting off at the M07 station and following the clearly marked signs in the station that says Metropolitan Government building. Later when we went with friends the next day, and got off at M08 station, that shibuya station was so packed with people that it was easy to miss the signs and get lost. So I recommend getting off at M07 station and following the signs to this building.
Metropolitan Government Building: You can stand/sit across the street and watch the projection shows every half hour starting at 7PM to 9:30PM. The shows repeat on the week days, but on the weekends there’s the special Godzilla projection on the building that’s supposed to be super cool. We were only there during the week nights, so didn’t get to see it.
Metropolitan Government Building: a projection of samurai fighting outside the castle
Metropolitan Government Building: Afterwards, walk to the building following the signs to the south tower 45th floor to see the 360 view from above. It’s free! There’s also a souvenir shop and a cafe to get some matcha ice cream up here on the observation deck. Supposedly, if you come during the day time, you can eat lunch at the employee cafeteria for 200-300 yen, but we only came at night, so not sure.
Day 2
The next morning we walked to Tsukiji market from our hotel at 6:30AM for breakfast. Our hotel was at Tsukiji Market Tokyu Stay Tsukiji, which we recommend because there’s a washer and dryer in the room so we were able to easily do laundry and pack less for our 22 day trip. The hotel is only a minute walk to the market. Sushi for breakfast sounds weird, but there were LONG lines already at 7:30AM when this sushi stall opened. There’s other stalls open too at 6:30AM so just wander around to see what strikes your fancy!
Tsukiji Market Eats: tamago on a stick.
Tsukiji Market Eats: tamago on a stick. It was a lot sweeter than I thought it would be.
Due to the favorable exchange rates, fatty tuna 6 piece nigiri sets were only $18-$23
Tsukiji Market Eats: buttery very fatty, medium fatty, and lean tuna nigiri (stall opens at 7:30AM). OMG, this was so good, we lined up the next morning for another set.
Tsukiji Market Eats: Tuna musubi (yum!) and salmon with mentaiko musubi (hummm, not sure I liked the mentaiko mixed in here. Should have just gotten plain salmon).
Tsukiji Market Eats: Giant shrimp cracker (stall doesn’t open til 8:30AM). They make this by pouring batter to a hot plate, placing a shrimp on top of the batter, and then flattening it. Definitely instagrammable, but in reality only the white cracker part was crispy and tasty. The flattened shrimp was super chewy, but gotta still eat the shrimp cuz it’s the most expensive ingredient!
Tsukiji Market Eats: Strawberry mochi with chocolate. Good of course
Today we also got to meet up with friends that were also in Japan at the same time! We took the train to Yokohama, about an hour away from our hotel, and did the Cup Noodle museum, then walked along the waterfront to Chinatown for dinner and then caught the train back to Tokyo. It was raining the whole day, so we didn’t get to explore Yokohama as much as we wanted, but we had a great time hanging out with friends.
Note: when taking the train to Yokohama from Tokyo, make sure you get on the Toyoku Line limited express (it should say thru to Motomachi-chukagai). That way it, you can stay on the train without transferring and it goes to Yokohama. Get off at MM03 exit queens, exit 5.
Cup Noodle Museum: The museum (500 yen) has a film with English subtitles to learn how cup noodles were invented, as well as a lunch noodle bazaar where they sell small bowls (500 yen each bowl) of different noodles from around the world. There’s also a station to make our own cup noodles (500 yen). After decorating your styrofoam cup, you get to fill it with the noodle, then choose 4 toppings and a soup base. Mine was seafood flavored with shrimp, kamaboku (in the chicken mascot shape), mystery meat, green beans.
Cup Noodle Museum: we also made
reservations to make chicken ramen with our friends (1000 yen). No pictures allowed during the making of the ramen, but it was way more fun than making the cup noodles. We got to mix the flour with water and sesame oil, and then put the dough into a pasta machine to roll it out, cut it, steam the noodles, flavor them, put them in a round mold, and then they fry the noodle cake for you. Afterwards they package seal the noodles in your own designed packaging, and let you keep the noodles and cute chicken mascot bandana as a souvenir! The whole process takes 90 min, and I highly recommend it even though it was all conducted in Japanese.
Cup Noodle Museum: The finished product!
We ended our day in Yokohama eating dinner in Chinatown and then had some delicious Japanese fluffy pancakes at A Happy Place. Unlike the Happy Pancake in Tokyo, the one is Yokohama has no long lines. We were able to walk right in and get seated. Not sure if this was cuz it was raining or Yokohama is just less crowded than Tokyo…
Day 3
This morning we had breakfast at Tsukiji Market again before heading out for our tour of the imperial palace, followed by shopping at Akihabara (electric town), and then Team Labs Borderless.
Imperial Palace Tour: We followed the detailed instructions on this
website to sign up for a free tour of the palace (residence of the emperor of Japan). The previous time we were in Tokyo, way back in 2016, we couldn’t get a tour because the palace was closed for a dignitary visiting that day, so we wanted to get a tour this time around. Slots open up at 5AM japan time on the first of each month and are booked up within 30 min of the slots opening up. But if you can’t get the online tickets, I think on the day of, you can line up an hour before the tour starts to see if you can get in.
The tours take 90 min and are all outdoors, no buildings are entered. They split everyone up for the English vs Japanese vs other language tours. Pictured above is Fujimi-yagura, a 3 storied keep, reconstructed in 1659 as a watch tower. It’s one of the oldest remnants of Edo Castle. That’s because during the Meji restoration, and after subsequent earthquakes and fires, most of the buildings from the Edo era were replaced with more modern structures.
Imperial Palace Tour: Kyuden Totei This is the reception hall where they receive dignitaries. The building architecture is inspired by Frank Loyd Wright. Also on New Years and the Emperors birthday, the emperor and empress will stand on the balcony and receive greetings from the people.
After the tour, we walked to the Imperial Palaces East Gardens. It’s open to the public with no reservations needed, and provides a nice peaceful stroll among the well manicured gardens. Pictured above are long tailed carp that one of the emperor’s bred between Indonesian carp and Japanese carp. It’s at Ninomaru Garden
Akihabara Town: We took the subway from the palace to electric town, an area filled with electronic stores, anime shops, and maid cafes. Here the maids are at the station advertising for the restaurants. But we ended up eating at Johnathan’s where “robots” serve you food.
Team Labs Borderless: We booked timed tickets in advance for team labs because these get sold out often. There’s team labs borderless and team labs planets in Tokyo. Since we’ve never been to either, we chose the larger one—Borderless. Website link is
here and ticket prices depend on the date you choose (4400 to 5000 yen per person). This place is pretty cool. Our tickets were for 4:30PM, but we got there early at 4PM and they still let us in. (We read it was hard to find this place because Google maps directs you to the wrong place, so we wanted to budget more time hunting for the entrance. The entrance is at the basement floor of Azabudai Hills Garden plaza and if you consult the mall map, it won’t call this team labs but rather Digital Arts.)
Pictured above is the first room you enter. Here, flowers are everywhere, AND you can even smell a flora fragrance. So cool, and it sets the right tone for the rest of the adventure.
Team Labs Borderless: You wander around the rooms in whichever direction you fancy and can reenter rooms multiple times—sometimes by choice and sometimes by accident. It’s easy to get lost here as there is no map. But that’s ok. The rooms were so neat, I didn’t mind repeating some. My favorite is this crystal bubble room, pictured above, where there are round ornaments hanging and mirrors everywhere making it feel like you are stepping into an infinite crystal bubble room. The pictures don’t do it justice.
Team Labs Borderless: There’s also a room where your drawings get digitally up loaded and your creatures come alive swimming in the ocean. Here’s my turtle and David’s fish. Yeah the letters for D n A and D ❤️ A came out backwards…oops
Team Labs Borderless: In the tea room you can order drinks (600 yen pp) and projections appear in the drink. As you bring the bowl up to sip and put it back down, flowers radiate from the cup. As the liquid in the bowl diminishes, so do the flowers . It’s really neat, and I couldn’t figure out how they did this. It can’t be something like calculating the refractive index of the light hitting the bowl to then determine the flower projection patterns, right? That would be wild.
Team Labs Borderless: Crystal room where there are strings of light changing crystals hanging plus mirrors making the room feel like an infinite crystal room.
Dinner at Tsukiji: After team labs, we had a chirashi bowl, crab roll, miso butterfish, and a sashimi salad for dinner.
Day 4
Today, we took the train to Nikko. Since the hotels we booked in Tokyo and Nikko were reasonably priced, we decided to just pack an overnight bag and leave most of our stuff at the Tokyo hotel. We booked the 2-day Nikko pass ($11) as well as train tickets on SpaciaX ($14.50) at 7:50AM on klook. While the 2 day Nikko pass covers the train from Asakusa station to Tobu Nikko and back, it would only cover the local slow train. You want to additionally book tickets for the limited express train to get to Nikko in a timely manner, and Spacia X is one of their new trains. We booked the tickets at least two weeks in advance because the 7:50AM train leaving Asakusa and arriving in Nikko at 9:39AM is popular and gets sold out fast.
Here’s a good link to a map of Nikko and all the public transportation routes. Download the klook App and use that to buy your train tickets. Klook makes things really easy for tourists, because then you don’t have to wait in line to exchange vouchers; just use the klook QR code provided.
When we arrived in Nikko, we dropped our bag off at the hotel (hotel Station II, super cheap, only $80 a night and is 2 blocks from the Tobu Nikko station). It was raining, but luckily we had rain jackets and the hotel let us borrow their umbrellas.
First stop at Nikko is to try the Nikko Sakaeya age- yuba Manju at the stall right across from the Tobu Nikko train station. It’s a sweet treat filled with red bean, wrapped in a dough and Yuba (tofu skin) and then Battered and fried. I think they sprinkle salt crystals onto to outside of the manju too. There’s some benches right outside the stall that you can sit to enjoy the manju with free barley tea. The tempura manju was still hot, and the salty plus sweet flavors were really good. Definitely a must get!
Then we walked up the street to Fudaraku Manju to try the Yuba musubi. It’s a savory sticky short grain rice wrapped in Yuba (as opposed to onigiris usually made with medium grain rice) and was quite delicious. Well, I love sticky rice, so I may be biased… The owners husband collects samurai figurines, so you will see the figurines displayed in the back if you sit and eat inside. They also offer free tea.
We then caught the
world heritage bus (covered in the 2 day Nikko pass) up to
Toshogu ShrineToshogu Shrine: (9:00AM - 5:00PM, 1600 yen. You buy your tickets at the kiosks. Cash or IC card, no credit card allowed) is a shrine to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled Japan for over 250 years until 1868. (Yes, it’s the same Tokugawa that inspired the historical fiction in James Clavell’s Shogun.) During this peaceful period, the samurai could focus more on developing art and other luxuries. The shrine is huge, with tons of stairs and takes more than an hour to explore. The famous motifs are the “see, hear and speak no evil monkeys”, the dragons, the elephants (which the artist created without ever seeing an elephant), and the sleeping cat.
Toshogu Shrine dragons
Toshogu Shrine sleeping cat
Rinnoji Buddhist temple and Gardens (this is a short 10 min walk from the Toshogu shrine and is one of the most important temples in Nikko because it was founded by the monk that brought Buddhism to Nikko in the 8th century. It’s 900 yen for the temple, plus gardens and treasure house and Taiyuin shrine. Later we found out we could have paid less since we were not going to Taiyuin shrine.)
Lunch of katsu curry and chicken oyakidon at Sanraku. It’s a 10 min walk from Rinnoji temple. Delicious, cash only though.
Kamangafuchi Aybss: from the restaurant, we took a nice 20-30 min walk to
Kamangafuchi abyss. It’s known for its rows of Jizo statues along the river gorge. There’s also a small pavilion where you can see multiple baby waterfalls pouring into the gorge. Afterwards, we could have walked back to the main road to take the world heritage bus back to the hotel, but decided to walk back instead for exercise. It’s about a 40 min walk. Along the way, we stopped off to get sesame ice cream and a strawberry mochi ice cream and take a picture of the famous red bridge.
Shinkyo bridge: constructed in 1636, the bridge stands at the entrance to all of Nikko’s shrines and temples. It’s 300 yen to cross this bridge
Dinner at dining cafe Yuba Komachi: Tomato Yuba ramen and fried Yuba rice bowl (pictured below) were surprisingly very good! The ramen had a nice bouncy texture and almost tasted like freshly made noodles and the tomato based soup was not tart like I thought it would be. The fried Yuba rice bowl pictured below almost tasted like meat. It was delicious!
Fried Yuba Don
Day 5
Today we checked out of the hotel and caught the free shuttle bus at 9:35AM from across the JR Nikko station up to Edo wonderland. There’s clear signs of where to wait for this shuttle, and the bus will be painted outside with the words Edo Wonderland. The shuttle bus ride is about 30 min, as opposed to trying to take the train which required transfers and would take over an hour. Here’s the Edo Wonderland free shuttle bus schedule. The buses are infrequent so take note of when to catch the bus coming back to JR Nikko station. We arrived at Edo wonderland at around 10AM. We had already purchased our tickets online at KKday (Edo wonderlands online website), so we could just show the QR code at the entrance to get in.
Edo Wonderland is a recreation of a town during the Edo period. You can walk around to enjoy the Edo style buildings, bridges, food, and watch plays (ninja show, the water magic show, and the geisha shows were good) and participate in arts and crafts of the Edo period. Entrance fee is 5800 yen per person. You can also dress up for a fee to match the Edo town atmosphere.
Our cousins were just at Edo Wonderland the day before, and gave us some great tips via WhatsApp. We unfortunately were not able to meet up with them in Nikko, so we will meet up back at home to share stories of our Nikko experience.
I dressed as a town woman (4100 yen) and David dressed up as a samurai (5100 yen).
This ninja trick room made me SO dizzy. I had to surrender part way and get out of the ninja house! I didn’t get dizzy at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, so I don’t know what’s different here.
Around town, workers were dressed up. Here’s a group holding a prisoner hostage.
The food was also quite good. This is an okonomiyaki steamed bun (600 yen).
And this is a deer meat steamed bun (600 yen).
Soba noodle restaurant (1000 yen).
Later, we also had some chicken (500 yen each) and duck (800 yen each) skewers at a different stall. The chicken “meatball” skewers were really really good, better than the ones I had later in Fukuoka. The flavor was good and the texture of the ground chicken resembled that of a hand minced chicken as opposed to fine ground chicken, so it was surprisingly really good for amusement park food. I wish I took a picture of the skewers!
Making senbei (250 yen) was fun (even though the lady teaching us reprimanded me).
Geisha procession, look at her shoes!
We stayed til 3:45, and caught the 4:05PM shuttle back to JR Nikko station. The bus driver was nice enough to drop us off at the Tobu Nikko station. I used the klook app while on the shuttle to book our train ride for 5:24PM back to Asakusa station. It wasn’t a Spacia train but it was fine. The Klook App is great! We got back to Tokyo at around 8PM. We had a fun day, and would recommend this Edo Wonderland experience even though it is a bit pricey and most things were conducted in Japanese.
Omiyage from Tokyo:
Top left are these delicious mochi bits coated in caramel colored chocolate. I liked these candies so much from our Japan trip back in 2016, that I saved the wrapper so I could remember what to look for when I returned to Japan. Top right is a rectangular chocolate with a Tokyo banana cookie on top. They say Tokyo banana is famous to get here, but I didn’t like the artificial taste of the Tokyo banana, so I’m hoping these Tokyo banana cookies are better. Bottom row are a variety of Kit Kat flavors you rarely see in the states, like chestnut, strawberry and peach.
