Tokyo!

 

A Quick Summary

We landed in Tokyo on Sunday and spent 4 nights exploring the city, including a day trip to a nearby town called Hakone! We are now on the train to our next stop (Matsumoto), which I’ll write about in the next post. 

Highlights

Hakone

We took a day trip to Hakone, which is a town in the mountains near Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, Mt. Fuji was clouded over when we were there, but we still got to see some great views. We got to ride a variety of things, including: a boat across the lake that looked like a pirate ship, a gondola over a sulphur mine, and also a train that did switchbacks up the mountain (the driver would get out and walk to the other end of the train, then it would reverse up the next leg).

The city

Seeing Tokyo was really neat. It is such a massive city and there is so much variety in the things we did. To name a few, we visited some temples, saw the city at night, checked out the entertainment district, got totally squished on the subway, explored some parks, and went to a 12 storey Uniqlo store! 

Temple near our hostel

Tokyo sky tree at night

Technology district

Narrow alley with tons of tiny bars

Lookout at night 

Flagship Uniqlo store

Famous Shibuya scramble crossing

Teamlabs

We went to check out Teamlabs, which is a digital art museum. The photos don’t do it justice at all, it was this super cool immersive exhibit. I think my favourite part of it was it was all interactive - the art and projections weren’t just a loop. The art would respond to you touching the walls or walking around the space and it made you feel like part of the art! 

On top of the cool effects, there was a tea cafe where it would project a flower onto your cup which would then burst into petals when you took a drink, and an “aquarium” where you could draw a fish and then it would get added to the animals swimming around the room.

My squid swimming around

Tea with flower projection

Example of interactive art!

Mist projections

Japanese Society

Everything in Japan is very organized, clean, and efficient which is really nice! All the trains leave exactly on time, the stations are well labeled, and the streets are very clean. On our day trip to Hakone, the seats on the train all spun around automatically so that they were always facing forward! Also, this blind broke on one of the trains, so this guy came running (literally) to immediately fix it before we boarded. In Canada, I feel like something like that would take weeks to get repaired.

Fixing the blinds

Food Review

Yakitori

On our first day here, we were walking around and found this local yakitori (chicken skewer) spot that seemed super popular with locals. After waiting in line we got some chicken skewers (very good) and also decided to try some of the other mystery skewers (very not good). Everything was in Japanese so we just picked some random ones. We ended up with chicken skin, liver, and some kind of organ (still not sure what it was, maybe a heart or a lung?) that were all not great. 

7-11

Everyday for breakfast, we’ve been picking up small food items from the 7-11 near our hostel. They have a great selection of premade meals, onigiri, and other options for breakfast which has been super cheap and good!

Sushi

On our last night in Tokyo, we found this tiny mom and pop sushi place to try! It was really good and fresh and the owners were super kind even though they didn’t speak any English. We also tried sea urchin, which was very slimy and fishy tasting. I’m glad I tried it but it was definitely not my favourite thing ever. The rest of the sushi was amazing though! 

Other Photos

First meal in Tokyo (ramen)

At a park downtown Tokyo

There was a whole Harry Potter themed mall nearby the theatre that was showing The Cursed Child

Kira matching the Uniqlo mannequin 

Tokyo tower