Tokyo Seven Day Trip with Julie!

Tokyo Skytree Tower

Day 1

From Himeji to Tokyo it is an 8 hour car ride, but with the Shinkansen (bullet train) that time gets cut in half! We took the fastest Shinkansen, the Nozomi (it can go up to 186mph), to get to Tokyo. After the long train ride, we visited the Asakusa neighborhood. It was very crowded! But there are many stands to buy souvenirs and snacks.

Day 2 

The next day we walked to the Tokyo Skytree tower. It is the world's tallest tower standing at 2,080ft. You can go up to the observation deck and get a nice (depending on the weather) panoramic view of the city. There's also a shopping center at the base with many stores, including a Pokémon Center. There was a collaboration with a Japanese video game called Genshin Impact and they had many special items for sale. I hadn't heard of the game, but I looked it up and downloaded it afterwards.

Day 3

We went to teamLab Planets Tokyo, which is an immersive art experience created by a collection of diverse artists. They have cool exhibits, one of my favorites was the "Immerse Yourself in Flowers, Become One with the Garden"; I wish we could have spent more time in that one.

 

 

After teamLab, we went to Shibuya Crossing. It is a highly trafficked scrambled crossing right by the Shibuya Station Hachikō exit. Who is Hachikō? Get some tissues ready for this story. Near the exit there is a statue of Hachikō, a Japanese dog, who after its owner died still kept going to the crossing waiting for him. It did this for nine years until its death in 1935. Such a good boy! We were there the day after the first snowfall in Tokyo and someone had made two smaller "snowdogs" to accompany the statue.

From the Shibuya Crossing, the Harajuku neighborhood is not too far, so we walked over to Harajuku for some street fashion and shopping. Before we got to Harajuku, we ran into a Coke Zero pop-up store, but something wasn't quite right: the store ended up including some bizarre twists. And we got some free Coke Zeros!

 

Day 4

Last time we were in Japan we went to Tokyo DisneySea, so of course this time we had to visit Tokyo Disneyland! You have to buy your tickets ahead of time. We struggled a bit with the process but eventually we were able to buy them from the Disneyland app. We were there pretty much from opening to closing time! One unique thing to the parks here is that they have different-flavored popcorn carts. We tried the soy sauce popcorn, and I also wanted to try the matcha chocolate popcorn, but that cart closed earlier for some reason. Oh well!

 

 

Day 5

We went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, it is another building that has an observatory at the top. After that we took Julie to a BOOKOFF. Blake's favorite place to get secondhand CDs, there are other secondhand products like books and electronics as well.

Next was Shinjuku Gyoen park, it has three different types of gardens: a Japanese garden, an English garden, and a French garden. Since it was still winter there were no cherry blossoms yet, but there were some beautiful dark pink plum blossoms. We visited the famous Omoide Yokocho, a narrow alley with street food and bars dating back to Japan's post-WWII period. We tried a yakitori place, yakitori is meat and/or vegetables on small skewers. A nice way to wrap up the evening.

 

Day 6 Kamakura

The next day we went to Kamakura, which is about a one-hour train ride away from Tokyo. In Kamakura there is a Giant Buddha statue called the Great Buddha. It is the second largest bronze Buddha statue in Japan. If you go around to the side, you can actually pay to go inside the statue!

After the Great Buddha, we went to a small island near Kamakura called Enoshima. We walked up the stairs to Enoshima Shrine, only to discover they actually had escalators you could pay to get up there! So if you ever go there and are tired you can just take the escalators up. The deity of Enoshima Shrine is Benzaiten, also known for being the deity of wealth. We did a short trail around the island, and found a love bell! The story of Enoshima is that there was a dragon that was causing a lot of damage until one day Benzaiten and the island appeared. The dragon fell in love with her but she refused him since he had caused a lot of damage. He changes his ways and they got married. Now couples can ring the bell to express their love to each other. After exploring around the island, we walked to Katase-Enoshima Station (last picture below), which looked amazing. They completed the new look in 2020. From there, we headed back to Tokyo.

 

Day 7

Now all we had left was our approximately four-hour return trip to Himeji via the Shinkansen. In Tokyo Station (and most other large stations), you can buy ekiben, which are station lunches to-go that you can eat on the train. Some trains may even have snacks for sale onboard. Since it was going to be a long ride we bought karaage bentos. They helped make our ride back home a pleasant one!