This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Kidlike101 on 2024-03-18 19:51:03.

Pre-Trip

All bookings and the flight tickets were made and paid for at the start of September 2023. The yen being at its lowest + early booking prices made it possible for me to do this on a budget.

My main concern for the trip was my wonky right leg, I restarted my daily walks in December slowly building it up over time to where I can now walk 10 kms a day. Also I’m a pescatarian so printed out cards that said I can’t eat meat or chicken just in case.

Report will be broken down into two parts.

.

Day 1

Singapore Airline: Multicity round ticket. $790 + $40 for seat selection. My trip started off on the wrong foot for sure. For one thing the plan was to transfer in Singapore airport to my Tokyo flight (also Singapore Airline) with a transfer time of one hour. Sadly the plane was delayed exactly one hour at take off so… yeah, I’m not catching my transfer. They really handled it poorly though. A rep met us at disembarking. His plan was to catch the next flight to Haneda, in 7 hours!!! To make up for the inconvenience here’s a $15 voucher to (and I’m not joking here) Burger King in the next terminal.

I don’t know why the others agreed to this but I put up a fight. Seven hours meant I would be arriving at Haneda during the night time after public transport has closed. I’d rather not pay $200 for a cab ride home, thanks. The guy acted like I was being unreasonable and look look a voucher ohhhhhhh. Yeah, no. When it was clear I wasn’t ok with this he finally relented and said there was a flight to Narita in two hours I can be switched to. It means I’ll lose out on the voucher though, I think it was his last attempt but I was ready to stuff the paper into his mouth at this point!

Anyway two hours later I was on the flight to Narita and they were nice enough to upgrade my seat to extra leg space. At least, I thought it was nice until I looked to the left and locked eyes with the one toddler in the entire cabin. 7 hours, the flight was 7 hours. Holy $%&!!!

Tired and cranky I land in Narita airport. Decided to time it from customs & immigration till I got out. Starting time was 5:00pm on the dot. Done by 5:12. Took maybe 10 minutes to get my bags and I was ready to leave the airport.

Hot tip, DO THE VISIT JAPAN WEB QR CODE. The lines are divided into three. One for people who haven’t done the immigration papers (VERY long). One for those that did (not long but the immigration office will stop and question them). Last is QR code, hardly 5 people in there and we never stopped anywhere. Just breezed through it all and once was shown my answers to the web questions to confirm them. Even the immigration officer didn’t stop me. Just looked up my web answers and applied the Tax QR code to my passport before letting me through.

I had some delay picking up the wifi since I had booked it for Haneda but eventually customer services sorted it out (Global wifi). Also the best currency exchange rate I got was at the airport. 158 yen per Euro with a 4 yen difference. Inside the city the best I ever saw was 149 yen with a 10-12 yen difference.

The one place where I was delayed was getting a ticket to the Keisei Skyliner. Line was 45 minutes long BUT aside from the tickets you can pick up the Pasmo IC card from the same counter. This turned out to be the best idea of the trip. An IC card is a must if you’re planning on jumping around a lot. It’s just so convenient and you can use it for small purchases in case you don’t have change… also get a coin purse. I was in Japan for five minutes and already had a small mountain of them.

One transfer later I was in Tamachi and checking into my hotel. I grabbed two onigiris and a sakura latte from Starbucks at the train station to be my first meal in Japan.

.

Day 2 (Saturday)

Hotel Gracery in Tamachi: $65 per night. I had my reservations with this one but it turned out to be rather nice. Room small but fine for one person. Clean with a rather large bathroom for a business hotel. My room also came with a view of the river which was just lovely. Best of all they really were a five minute walk from Tamachi station which I used almost daily.

For my first adventure I took a cab to Setagaya Park (Hanegi) to attend the plum festival. That 30 minute ride costed 7040 yen exactly so yeah, no more cabs after this lol!

The park itself was lovely, some plum trees still in bloom and quite a few food stalls and an activities section for the kids. Had my first taste of Takoyaki and the addiction begins!

Anyway at around 11 a cultural show started with an opening comedy bit staring yours truly. I forgot the exact line but the announcer basically said “Welcome everyone, friends, neighbors, coworkers and that one Gaijin (aka foreigner)” which got a laugh from everyone. The show was fun though, different traditional dances showcased from the slow but elegant to the more festive. Overall I had loads of fun and the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed.

After that I visited FUGLEN which is a coffee shop just outside the park. Smoothest coffee I’ve ever had! There was a promising looking Pancake shop close by as well but I was so full of festival food at this point that I just couldn’t.

Attempting to walk it off I tried to locate Gotoku-ji Temple. Which is when my wifi died because I forgot to charge it. It’s fine, the directions said walk straight for 15 minutes then turn left. How hard can that be?

So 45 minutes later, one elderly women kicking me out of the post office because no Japanese, one nice shop keeper giving me directions & a map to the temple all of which were in Japanese, one cyclist that also failed to read that map later I decided to call it. I think it’s the fact that the cyclist held the map upright, then sideways, then upside deciding this had to be the right way was what made me throw in the towel.

I back tracked to the last train station and decided to just get off at the first familiar sounding station. Which is how I ended up in Yoyogi Park that was also holding a festival. This one was massive in comparison with a kids show going on every hour or so. Looking through the stalls I did end up buying some nice homemade jam which smelled amazing. The star of the festival however was the Hokkaido Seafood stall. The place is so massive that there were plenty of food stalls and no lines but that was the only one with not one but TWO lines. One to pay and another to collect your meal. So I paid, turned out to cost only 100 yen so a dollar and headed to the collection line not even knowing what I bought. Turned out to be grilled scallops served is a real seashell as a dish. Dude… that had no right to be as good as it was for 100 yen!!! After trying a few other stalls I went back and got two more deciding this was going to be my lunch and then off to Meiji Temple.

Just be warned, it’s quite a walk to get there and all uphill. Also you can’t get to it from inside the park. Anyway my first temple so celebrated by getting my first Omikuji. It turned out to be a poem that translated to “Even the Mountain, with its peak in the sky, can be climbed so long as there is a path.”

Ended the day with a quick stop in Ginza Uniqlo & Daiso for some add-ons. By the way when you first land in Japan best avoid the konbini. I found most items I got from there in my day one frenzy for 300 – 500 yen all in Daiso, same brands in most cases as well.

.

Day 3 (Sunday)

First stop of the day was Shinjuko as the Hanazono Shrine had a flea market scheduled. Five minutes in the station and already I was lost, seriously consider staying near a small station. The Major ones are confusing, over-crowded and a little insane! After finally finding my way out I came across another hurdle. Today was the Tokyo Marathon so the streets were closed, meaning that to cross I had to use the underground each and every time! Finally took a tumble on the second crossing and hurt my left knee. The wound was pretty bad and it took three days to properly scab over. Stopping by the first pharmacy along the way for first aid I limped to the shrine. It was so quiet I thought the whole thing was cancelled but no, the market was in full swing, everyone in Tokyo is just so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. After that I looked around Shinjuko for about an hour and tried some crane games.

From Shinjuko I headed to my main destination for the day, Chofu. I love GeGeGe no Kitaro so just had to visit the Chaya themed around the show there. Also it happened that today Jindaiji Temple was hosting a Daruma festival. This was more of a classic Japanese festival like you would see in anime with the catch the goldfish game and pull the rope from the knot to see what prize it’s attached to. A million and one food stalls all smelling amazing BUT the place was PACKED. The stalls were along a narrow walkway comfortable enough for one person yet there were four lanes going so it was near impossible to stop somewhere to look or buy anything. Anyway a few munches & one rather large Drauma later I found the Chaya! This was legit the first meal I had in Japan. Like, actually sat down for food instead of munching on street food as I went. Totally worth the trouble, the food was great, the merch cute and the little Kitaro museum charming. I left very happy.

Sadly I couldn’t visit the onsen in the area, Yumorinosato, because of my literal bleeding wou…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1bhyiio/two_weeks_march_trip_report_week_1_tokyo/