Saikourobyn - Robyn's May Mays

Japan 2020 - Day 3

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Our first full day in Tokyo, we got lost on public transport and went up a tall building, find out all about it below!

Wednesday 26th February 2020

Tokyo

Originally we were supposed to be visiting the Ghibli museum but they had decided to close in order to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.

Instead we went for a more traditional museum, we headed over to Ueno park where all the museums seem to live. We walk through the park first admiring some plum/cherry blossom which is conveniently located next to a designated smoking spot.

We found Ueno Park Boat Dock in Shinobazu Pond with some colourful characters in the form of bird boats with bow ties, regrettably as it was technically still winter you could not take one for a spin.

We did start a bit late today so we only had time for one place, the Tokyo National Museum. I think I would have preferred a less art and more history but it was still very interesting to look at. We were fortunate to see it at this stage as a few days later it was closed to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.

We got booted out and headed over to Skytree, on the way there we were on the lookout for food. We found that at Ueno Station there was a mall/food court with many places to eat including a vegan place called T’s TanTan the food was good but some of the decoration needed some work, the “vegan” books on the wall turned out to not be genuine.

When it came time to leave it we were denied exit from the food court, turns out we had entered a part of the station but as we didn’t want to catch a train from this side we had to pay a small fee to use the food court before we were allowed out.

It definitely took some time to get used to the underground trains in Tokyo, Google Maps was ok at getting you from A to B but there’s another app called Japan Transit Planner which gives you options for travel like shortest or cheapest journey although it lacks a map which means you need to look up the names of where you are and where you want to go so you end up flicking between the two to work it out. You can also tell it if you are using the JR Pass so it will prefer putting you on those trains, we only had a 7 day pass and couldn’t start using it yet.

The app however did lead us astray with no map to show the journey. We ended up taking a 7.5 mile 38 minute train and we missed our stop as I thought there were two stations for Skytree which there are but this train only stopped at one of them.

If I had seen it on a map I think I would’ve settled for having to change at Asakusa Station for the much shorter journey. In the end we walked from Asakusa Station to Skytree, where we got to see the Ashai golden poo to make up for our extended journey.

Skytree itself is a broadcasting and observation tower, you can pay to go to the top or you can do as we did and head to a bar in the Tokyo Skytree East Tower, where for the price of a beer you can sit and enjoy the view and you get to drink beer!

At the bottom of Skytree there is a large mall with over 300 shops, but only 1 I really cared about, the Pokemon Center. I was on the lookout for exclusive merch but I assumed that this was just a smaller version of the main store so I didn’t get very much this time. We also found a Ghibli store which partly made up for not being able to go to the Ghibli museum.

Finally we went up the tower to 天空LOUNGE TOP of TREE to get our beer and admire the view.

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Japan 2020 - Day 4

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Sightseeing shrines and temples in Northern Tokyo, then shopping in Akihabara.

Thursday 27th February 2020

Tokyo

Asakusa

The next day it was time for more history only this time it was outside and it was looking at old buildings. We went to Asakusa (浅草) and started off admiring the Kaminarimon Gate (浅草寺 風雷神門) leading up to the Sensō-ji (浅草寺) Temple and the Pagoda. To get from the gate and the temple you walk through the Nakamise-dori Shopping Street (仲見世商店街) we wondered part way down but decided to get some food first.

Apparently we went to a Unagi restaurant Funachu although I don’t recall having eel. Then it was back to the shopping street leading up to the Hōzōmon Gate (宝蔵門) which is just before the Temple. Here people posed in front of the gate all dressed up, I now know that you can rent kimono to wear so I would love to do this next time.

To the left of the gate is the Five-Storied Pagoda (浅草寺 五重塔) and after passing through the gate we finally reached Sensō-ji Temple

The old and the new, Tokyo Skytree towers over the skyline in the distance.

Akihabara

It may sound silly but I was excited to check out Japanese shops, one that had been recommended to me was called Bic Camera.

It’s a big department store that sells everything including but not limited to, fancy toilet seats, fancy ceiling lights, video games, label makers, rice cookers and big televisions. I didn’t actually buy anything but it gave me some good ideas of what I would like to get in the future now that I know it’s available.

As we were in Akihabara that can mean only one thing, retro video games! First up was Super Potato, as it has become the most famous retro store it’s also become the most expensive but still worth checking out, they didn’t seem to have any of the items that I was most interested in and flipping through games trying to work out what they are by the picture was very time consuming, another lesson learnt I need to know the exact title in Japanese so I can read it off of the spine for cd/dvd games and maybe even a picture of the front cover/label.

I found another store down the road which did have some of the bits that I needed including the disk system game that I had been after Doki Doki Panic (released as Super Mario Bros 2 in the west) there was another store I wanted to visit but I had lost track of time and it was now 8 pm and the store had closed so I would need to return another day.

I arranged to meet back up with Oli but not before another exciting stop for me in the form of BookOff, from my research this was an second hand shop equivalent to CEX in the UK, here I found another few to tick off like a Wii U, a drum controller and 2 Taiko no Tatsujin games. I was worried I had spent too long in there but Oli was running late too so it worked out fine, I took a train and met him back at the station near Hiroshi’s place and we stayed in for food.

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