16 days in Tokyo & Kyoto
A bleary-eyed 5am start. We creep out of the ryokan and find out taxi waiting – love that Japanese punctuality, but it means we’re very early for our train and nothing’s even open at the station yet. I have to settle for a can of warm coffee from a vending machine – the stuff is …
First thing today is to go back to the Costume Museum, which is happily open this time. It’s a cute one-room affair with a miniature-sized diorama of an Emperor’s palace, with little dolls of all the people in costume. Very nicely done, and you can also try on a full-size traditional robe and have photos …
Luckily the weather is much nicer today, still a little cold but bright and sunny. We get up early and catch the train (using our JR passes) out to Nara, about 45 minutes south of Kyoto. It’s Japan’s first capital city but now feels like a smallish town that centres around tourism. The main street …
Our plan for today is to do some ‘city’ stuff like museums, shopping and playing video games. First stop is the Costume Museum, just up the road from our hotel, only to find it’s mysteriously closed. I remember reading something about today being Kansai Culture Day, a semi-public holiday, so maybe that’s why. Hopefully it …
A slightly alarming start to the day when I find that one of my little toes has swollen to nearly double its normal size and is extremely painful to walk on – I thought I had just get blisters from my shoes yesterday but this was beyond blister pain. Not going to waste time crying …
Wake up early as we’d ordered the ryokan breakfast which is only served until 9.30 – we’re used to getting up about 10.30ish as Tokyo doesn’t really wake up until mid-morning. Eat toast and coffee with the other guests then go back to the room to plan a temple-walking route for today. It’s a bright …
We get up pretty early to finish packing, and check out of the hotel mid-morning. Get the metro to the main Tokyo station and swap our exchange orders for rail passes, which come in a snazzy shiny case with the Great Wave on. Have an early lunch of tasty bagels then board the shinkansen bullet …
Our last full day in Tokyo! Just as we’re almost able to navigate Shinjuku Station and generally know our way around, we have to leave tomorrow. First thing we have to do today is find me a new suitcase, because the wheel snapped off mine on the way to the hotel on our first day. …
Bright and sizzling hot day. We take a quick metro over to the central Marunouchi area which houses lots of museums and the Imperial Palace Gardens (the mysterious palace itself is closed to the public). There’s a brass band playing in the gardens and a very pretty area with a little waterfall and a koi …
First call today back to Akihabara, in the light of day this time, to seek out the gamer shops we missed. Find Aso Bit Hobby just south of the station which has a good selection of stuff ranging from cute (I buy yet more stationery) to mega geeky. Then go to Mandarake which stocks all …
Sunny and warm again, hurrah. We get the Yamanote line (this train line is amazing and seems to go everywhere we’ve needed to get to in Tokyo) up to Nippori, also known as Texile Town for its amount of fabric shops. Since I already bought some stuff in Okadaya yesterday, we just head to the …
It’s forecast to bucket with rain all day, and it isn’t wrong, so we head to the gigantic (ironically-named) Sunshine City mall in Ikebukuro. The mall itself is a bit of a letdown, not my kind of shops (with a few exceptions – a Ghibli souvenir shop and Hello Kitty goodies) but we have a …
We take a break from shopping today and head to Asakusa, home of the Senso-ji temple, the oldest temple remaining in Tokyo (WW2 bombs take out most of them). It’s teeming with people so it’s a bit hard to appreciate the famous entrance gate with its huge red paper lantern. We then get stopped by …
Josh’s birthday, and the day we’d pre-booked tickets for the Studio Ghibli animation museum. We get the metro out to Kichijoji because I’d heard there are a couple of good shops and eateries there. Right opposite the station is a large network of covered-over streets of market-cum-shops selling not very exciting things like toiletries and …
We get the metro down to Shibuya for some shopping. Initially get a bit lost on the walkways over the busy roads but eventually stumble across 109, a totally insane mall for teenage girls; little boutiques over 7 floors with obnoxious pop music blasting out of every one and dolled-up teenagers browsing. It’s pretty manic …
We probably chose the wrong flight time, because we get into Tokyo at 8am after a 5am start and 14-hour journey. After a fun bonus ‘guns and narcotics’ search at customs and a brief panic about which carriage to get on, we board a spotlessly clean train and enjoy the views of traditional-looking Japanese houses …