This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/OrganizationOdd3142 on 2024-11-25 03:23:02+00:00.

Just got back! I took my little sister with me and we spent five nights in Tokyo, two in Hakone, two in Kyoto, one in Nara (sort of…), and one in Osaka (also a sort of…). We had plenty of times embarrassing ourselves and also a bit of bad luck health-wise, but still had a fantastic time.

Things you should bring:

• Portable hand soap (e.g. paper soap). I had heard this recommendation before and unfortunately didn’t take it seriously enough. I had also heard that it was fairly easy to find in stores, which we didn’t find to be the case- perhaps we weren’t looking in the right places. Either way, to avoid the hunt I would bring some with you. To be clear, bathrooms in stations or businesses do have hand soap. After encountering these a few times, I was overcome with a sense of hubris and assumed that the reports that public bathrooms don’t have soap were exaggerated. Eventually, though, you’re going to need to use a bathroom in a park or at the start of a trail or even in a Tokyo neighborhood where you just don’t want to have to find a cafe to eat at to maybe have a chance of using their one toilet, and you’re going to want to have some hand soap with you when you do.
• Medicine: painkillers, cold medicine, allergy medicine. We brought allergy medicine and a little bit of ibuprofen, which only lasted a few days; we didn’t bring any cold medicine. Of course we both ended up getting colds over the trip, despite doing everything in our power to avoid getting sick (had all our vaccines, wore masks the entire trip over). We bought some Japanese ibuprofen and cold medicine, which was a little bit helpful, but it was startling how quickly my symptoms improved when I got home and took some Dayquil- I badly wish I had some with me during the trip.

Japanese Language things I would recommend you know:

• Reading katakana. Many restaurants have English menus, but not all. Half of many menus, though, are English words written in katakana. Learning katakana is really easy and doesn’t require any further knowledge of Japanese, and will allow you to order from most menus knowledgeably.
• Numbers. Most stores will type out the cost on a calculator for you to see visually, but locations like food carts or teahouses on mountains didn’t, they’d say the price aloud. You want to know what is meant when you’re told that the price is “happyaku ni juu-en”, for instance.
• Specific words:
  • ‘saabisu’ (from English ‘service’) refers to a freebie. If somebody says this while pointing at something, they’re saying you can take it for free.
  • ‘isshou’ means together. If you’re travelling with somebody and asked this, you’re usually being asked if you want to be charged together.
  • if you hear ‘fukuro’, you’re being asked if you want a shopping bag.
  • ‘mizu’ is water. Essential because it’s something you’ll want to ask for often.

Time spent in the Tokyo area:

Kichijōji

While visiting the Tokyo area, we stayed at Kichijōji Excel Hotel Tokyu. This was a really perfect choice for us. The hotel was my favorite of the trip. It was also one of the cheapest, coming to only 677 USD for five nights, and that was including Saturday night, which was substantially more expensive than the other nights.

Kichijōji is a really nice neighborhood, with lots of places to shop and eat. I honestly wish I had programmed more time into our itinerary to just stick around Kichijōji instead of jumping around other neighborhoods. On weekdays it was pretty quiet; on Saturday night it picked up a lot and I would say was about as busy as Shibuya was when we visited on a weeknight. Inokashira Park is also a really lovely park; we visited it twice, once intentionally and once just to spend time while our laundry was running at the laundromat, and really enjoyed it both times. The Ghibli Museum was closed the entire time we were there, so I can’t speak on it. We really enjoyed shopping at B-Side Label - you can find some of their stickers in a bunch of other stores, but the selection at their own store is huge. We had several of our nicest meals here, both in Harmonica Alley and other areas.

Shibuya

We got to Meiji Jingu at around 9am and left around 10:30am. We visited the gardens and the shrine. It’s a massive place; even though there were many visitors I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near overcrowded, because there was plenty of space. The gardens especially, which you pay to get into, were very quiet and peaceful. It’s maybe not the ideal time of year to visit them because the flowers aren’t in bloom, but we still really enjoyed the visit.

We walked through Harajuku around 11am and at that time a lot of places aren’t open yet, so it was very quiet. We were mainly window-shopping anyway, so it was a nice walk. At Miyashita Park we did a bit of shopping at some cute souvenir stores. Then we visited Tower Records, and I was able to pick up some Blu-Rays for old concerts that I’m very excited about. Next we visited Parco, eating tempura on the seventh floor and then going down to the sixth floor to shop. Then we explored a bit in the 109 building, and got coffees at a cafe.

Here is where I really took a big mis-step with our planning. If I’d scheduled Shibuya Sky for 6:00pm, it would have really neatly wrapped up our very nice day in Shibuya. Unfortunately, I actually scheduled Shibuya Sky for 8:20pm, because I am dumb overestimated how late we would want to stay out and about in Shibuya on our first full day, and also didn’t understand some logistical challenges I’ll discuss later.

This meant that we had to spend another few hours in Shibuya before our appointment, and our feet were starting to hurt. What we should have done is head onto the Shibuya Scramble Square building (the building that houses Shibuya Sky), which has a bunch of shops in addition to sit-down restaurants and cafes where we could have easily spent those hours. Instead, we continued walking the streets of Shibuya. We found the Mega Don Quijote and picked up some things there. We looked for dinner and stopped at a sushi restaurant and only realized after entering that it was a conveyor sushi restaurant. It was very yummy and convenient and fast, and totally antithetical to our goal of finding a place to sit down for a bit. We spent some time in a gachapon hall. By this point our feet were really seriously in pain.

We got up to Shibuya Sky finally and it was really nice, a totally gorgeous view. Getting down afterwards was a nightmare, though. Unbeknownst to us, the Shibuya Scramble Square building apparently shuts down floors 3-10 at a certain time, meaning you can’t take either the stairs or the escalators down- only elevators. This made it a really hectic and difficult time trying to get down. Once we did, I realized my next miscalculation. I had known that the Shibuya Scramble Square building was attached to Shibuya Station, and so had assumed that getting on the train back to the hotel afterwards would be fairly easy. I’d failed to account for how large Shibuya station is- we had a really long walk to the terminal. Once we got there, we had the only really bad and scary train experience of our trip, where the train was clearly completely full and people continued to push themselves in, packing each other in like sardines.

Anyway, all this is to say, we still had a really great day in Shibuya, but please learn from my mistake and don’t schedule Shibuya Sky for past 8:00. I would say that scheduling for 6:00 would be perfect; you’ll still get the night sky view, but not all the logistical nightmares.

Ginza

First we went to the Kabuki-za Theater, which was fantastic. The program this month is specifically one designed to be accessible to foreigners and newcomers, which is nice. The theater has a closed-caption service you can use for translation and some cultural notes, which unfortunately had some problems staying synced but was still quite helpful. During the intermissions, you can explore the building, get a meal or a parfait, and there was even a little scavenger hunt to do. It was a really cool experience; I was glad we did it.

Afterwards we went shopping in Ginza, which was unfortunately substantially less nice. First we went to Uniqlo, which was totally packed with tourists, who were also generally ruder than the fellow tourists we’d encountered earlier at locations like Shibuya. I ended up being glad we’d gone to a Uniqlo because I bought a parka that I used quite often for the rest of the trip, but I wish we’d just gone to the one in Kichijōji instead; it looked just as big and much quieter.

Afterwards we went to Itoya, which was not packed quite as much as Uniqlo but still was crowded past the point of comfort. The impression we got of shopping in Ginza in general was that it’s a very claustrophobic and kind of unpleasant experience.

DisneySea

We only did an evening pass here. It’s an absolutely gorgeous park. We ended up in the Mermaid Lagoon, and rode two rides and ate dinner before the Believe! Sea of Dreams parade. This was spectacular. I had been expecting just a particularly good boat parade, but this was so much more than that, and absolutely made the whole day. We headed back to the hotel right after- our feet were hurting really badly again, and it was a 2-hour commute back to Kichijōji.

Akihabara

I didn’t particularly vibe with Akihabara. I did visit two shops I was interested in, one of which turned ou…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1gz9gys/trip_report_tokyo_hakone_kyoto/