This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/magicalme_1231 on 2025-05-27 18:34:16+00:00.

Hey all, just wanted to share the experience my husband and I had in Tokyo. This sub has helped me a lot over the years. We had initially planned this trip for April 2020, then Japan and the rest of the world shut down. Now, 2025 we finally took our trip, better late than never!

This was my first time being overseas and my husbands second time since he was in high school. We are both mid 30’s and from America. It was intimidating being by ourselves, neither fluent in Japanese so we decided to stick to one place and one hotel this time. There will definitely be a next time for us to spread out outside of Tokyo!

Dates: 5/7 - 5/21 : We wanted to avoid all the other tourists during cherry blossom season and avoid golden week.

Hotel: Tokyu Stay Tsukiji : We very much enjoyed our stay here, would stay with them again in the future. Our room had AC and an in room washer/dryer which was something we were looking for. We wanted to pack as little as we could so the washer/dryer helped with that. At the end of our trip we still felt like we overpacked!

Phone plans: Husband activated an overseas plan through Verizon for a month. And he activated a travel plan through his employer on his iPhone. For my phone, I used Ubigi. We did unlimited data the first week, but since I used it so little we only renewed it for the 2nd week with 5GB or 10GB. I did not have calling or texting on my phone. I called my family over FB messenger a few times and called my husband over messenger if I was looking for him. It all worked out great. Husbands iPhone was our map(Apple maps) and it got us to everywhere we needed to be perfectly.

Trains: I got the physical Welcome Suica when we landed and husband had his on his phone.

We landed on a Wednesday and went straight to the hotel for the night, stopped at a konbini for food.

Thursday we had nothing scheduled and explored Tsukiji a bit. The Fish Market being right outside our hotel was very fun. With the jet lag we were up and awake early enough to see them set up and walk around before the area got really busy. We walked to Nissan Crossing and checked out Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple. Just wandered around the day really.

Friday we had a 1:00 reservation at Cup Noodles Yokohama. We arrived in Yokohama well before our scheduled time to do some wandering. The mall there was huge! We both very much enjoyed our time at Cup Noodles. After we were done there we did some more exploring, and took a ride in the Yokohama Air Cabin!

Saturday we had a reservation at the Seiko Museum. This was a free experience, but you needed a reservation. Another enjoyable experience, didn’t realize how close it would be to our hotel, so it was a short walk. It was a rainy day, luckily our hotel lent out umbrellas for free. After our time at Seiko Museum we walked to the Imperial Palace and walked around. We also walked to Tokyo Station, we took a step inside, but it looked like it was all train platforms, so we did not explore it this day.

Sunday we had a 1:00 Tokyo Free Walking Tour at Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. This is a free english tour guided by locals. We arrived in Asakusa early to explore the area. We ended up walking to Tokyo Skytree and buying a ticket to go inside. Also on our walk over to Skytree there was a Hawaiian Festival going on which was fun to watch. Our TFWT tour had one guide and 5 people in the group. On Sunday the temple was very busy and the sun was beating down. Our tour was pleasant, and our tour guide Yoshi, was very informative. He was also considerate of the sun, trying to find small areas of shade for our us to stop when he gave his speeches. I can’t recommend this service enough, I plan to do this again next time. It’s free, but you NEED to make a reservation.

Monday we had a reservation for Teamlab Borderless. Since our reservation wasn’t until 3:30 we decided to walk here. We stopped at Hamarikyu Gardens for a walk around there. You needed to buy some tickets to get in. I think we had just missed some flower display, all the flowers were gone and the Wisteria too. It was still enjoyable to walk around. We walk to another park, might have been Shiba Park(Shibakoen) and relaxed a bit. We had a great view of Tokyo Tower from here and then walked to Tokyo Tower. We went inside to look at the shops and restaurants. Then we walked to Azabudai Hills, what a beautiful place. We explored the area and went to teamlabs, it was so much fun!

Tuesday we had a reservation at Warner Bros Studio Tour. I think we looked on the map the night before and didn’t see much in the area to explore so we walked around Tsukiji this morning instead of showing up real early for our tour. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I loved this event. We spent hours walking around the sets. This was mostly our last day for pre-booked reservations.

Wednesday, we went to Akihabara. We started by visiting Toshogu Shrine. We went to Yodobashi Camera, and spent time at a few arcades.

Thursday, we got tickets to go to Art Aquarium Museum in ginza. The museum was fantastic! We did some more walking around Ginza and the Imperial Palace again. I don’t know how deep you can get into the imperial palace so thats why we walked around there again. We were trying to see what was and wasn’t off limits to visitors.

Friday, we went to Ikebukuro, we really enjoyed it here. We got tickets for the Sunshine city aquarium, walked around Sunshine City, stopped at the Pokemon Center, did some shopping. In the evening we went to Shibuya Crossing. Husband is a fan of cars and Friday evening after sunset is apparently a great time to see some cool cars. We did stop to see the Hachiko Statue but it looked like they were doing some construction around it with 3 walls up. So the only place you could see Hachiko was filled with tourists doing photo ops, so we saw Hachiko from afar!

Saturday, we went back to Yokohama but we started our morning going to Auto Bacs Headquarters. In Yokohama, we stopped at Nissan Gallery Headquarters and that was cool. They have a very little museum behind the showroom about the history of Nissan. Its free, no reservation needed either. We did some more shopping, I love the brand Gelato Pique and bought a few clothes at their store.

Sunday, we decided to go to Shinjuku. We started at Hanazono Shrine, bought some charms here for family. They had some vendors here that we browsed around too. We walked to the 3D cat screen to browse around the area as well. Later in the day we went back to our area and went to Tokyo Station again. This time we went in another way and found all the stores, restaurants and Tokyo Character Street! Can’t forget about the Pokemon Center of course, spend some more money there too!

Monday was Harajuku/Shibuya/Aoyama, we made reservations at a Samoyed Cafe in Harajuku for 1:00PM. We tried to see Hachiko again, still a line of people. Walked to Harajuku. Husband wanted to stop at Liberty Walk, we were impressed with that little area of shopping, very cute and fun! The Samoyed Cafe was great, clean place, cute dogs. While the staff may not be fluent in English, they had english placards for us and it was very fun! We walked to and explored around Aoyama, I think this is where we had a bite to eat at Goku Burger. In the evening, we stayed close to our hotel, and walked to Caretta Shiodome. There’s some shopping and restaurants in here, but if you take the elevator to the 46th floor, you get a beautiful view of the area, even in the elevator its beautiful! We went after sunset, so tokyo at night was gorgeous! Its free too!

Tuesday, we were making a gameplan for our trip home. We went back to Tokyo Station, I got to stop at Kirby Cafe for a snack. Husband was looking for more info about the Keisei Express(train) I believe? Im still confused as to the exact train we took. We went to Ikebukuro again afterwards, we spent time in a few arcades and gacha machines of course. In the evening we brought one of our suitcases to store in a locker at Tokyo station for the night and bought our train tickets for the airport.

Wednesday. Our flight wasn’t leaving until almost 7PM. Spent the last morning, walking around the fish market. Our checkout was at 11AM, but the we left our luggage in the lobby with the staff while we went to Ginza for a last browse. Stopped at the Perfume Oil Factory and that was a a fun experience, even bought some perfume oil. When we got back, we took an Uber to Tokyo Station, grabbed our luggage out of the locker and went to our train. It was a smooth trip to Narita Airport!

We very much enjoyed our trip in Tokyo, we were going to book a day at Tokyo Disney or Disney Seas, but because we needed to make an account we decided against it. I HATE making accounts for one time things. Maybe someday, but not this time. Now, I’m a picky eater so the cuisine was a little intimidating and my husband is not a big fan of seafood. I certainly don’t want to offend anyone by being picky. We kind of americanized our food experience. We went to Kura Sushi Ginza a few times, found an Italian restaurant we really liked in ginza and stopped there a few times too. Hoshino Coffee, which was really close was a fantastic place for some breakfast. I will admit I never noticed how Japan doesn’t really have designated breakfast foods. As someone who loves bacon and eggs, I had a hard time finding breakfast meals or sandwiches outside of McDonalds. Hoshino Coffee had a delicious French Toast dish. No…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1kwuz5x/2_weeks_tokyo_report/