May – June 2023 Japan Trip (Day 1-3)

Introduction

This is my second time visiting Japan.

Despite the fact that I have visited Tokyo before, there are still lots of places that I haven’t visited on my last trip. Thus, this trip is still a fascinating and memorable experience.

I have a few friends along the trip: Bosco, Ming Hin, Thomas, Tommy (Five people in total). You will get to see them in the main paragraph.

I highly recommend reading in chronological order (start with Day 1-3, then Day 4-6), since some events or contents in later days were based on earlier days.

Overview

The trip starts from 27 May to 8 June, spanning a total of 13 days.

• Day 1: 羽田空港 -> 新宿 歌舞伎町
• Day 2: 新宿 -> 高島平
• Day 3: 高島平 -> 東京大仏 -> 大山 -> 池袋 -> 高島平
• Day 4: 高島平 -> 大宮 -> 川越 -> 新都心 -> 高島平
• Day 5: 高島平 -> 御茶ノ水 -> 東京大学 -> 上野 -> 秋葉原 -> 有楽町 -> 高島平
• Day 6: 高島平 -> お台場 -> 未来館 -> 月島 -> 高島平
• Day 7: 高島平 -> 大宮 -> 渋谷 -> 三河島
• Day 8: 三河島 -> 秋葉原 -> 浜松町 -> 築地 -> 三河島
• Day 9: 三河島 -> 下北沢 -> 新宿 -> 代々木公園 -> 三河島
• Day 10: 三河島 -> 日光 -> 三河島
• Day 11: 三河島 -> 高崎 -> 桐生 -> 足利 -> 小山 -> 新宿 -> 三河島
• Day 12: 三河島 -> 宇都宮 -> 大谷 -> 宇都宮 -> 上野 -> 羽田空港
• Day 13: 羽田空港

Don’t worry about not being able to read kanji, I will only use them for this overview and the outline at the beginning of each day (for the sake of conciseness). I will use romaji for the main paragraphs.

Day 1 - Rough Start

27 May, 羽田空港 -> 新宿 歌舞伎町

I arrived from my home to the airport at around 15:45, being the last person to arrive.

There were two reasons for my late arrival:

1. I misremembered the timetable for the Airport Bus.
2. I had to buy a chiffon cake for Tommy, who did not have lunch.

We still had around 2 hours in the airport, so we checked in our luggage. Thomas, who packed his luggage right before the trip, had a much smaller luggage than the rest of us. It was so light that it could be brought to the plane directly.

After waiting in the airport, we finally boarded the plane, heading to Tokyo.

We arrived at Haneda Airport (羽田空港) at around 22:40. The air was breezy and the weather was clear. It was a good start, and it would have been perfect if it stayed like that for the entirety of our trip. Unfortunately, everything went downhill from there.

First off, I realised that I forgot to bring my jacket. Japan, being somewhat higher in latitude than where I live, is still cool during the summer. I ultimately decided that I would buy one in UNIQLO if I ever needed one (Spoiler: I didn’t).

Second problem: We didn’t have a hotel to stay in. That was actually less of a problem and more of the consequence of our unusual plan. Back when we were booking our place of residence, we didn’t book a hotel for Day 1, and decided that we would be staying overnight in Kabukichō (歌舞伎町). I was a bit hesitant about staying there the first night, but we stuck with the plan anyway.

And there comes our actual problem: the last train of the Yamanote line (山手線) will depart at around 12, and it’s currently around 11 in the airport. We arrived at the terminal furthest away from the main arrival terminal. This can only mean one thing: We have to be fast. Unfortunately for us, a lot of tourists were arriving at roughly the same time, and “being fast” and “having a lot of people” don’t make a good combination. We ended up spending quite some time queueing.

You can use IC cards in Japan for digital payment. There are different IC cards, which are distributed by different companies but roughly have the same features. Common examples include Suica and PASMO. I brought my Suica card (from my last trip to Tokyo) with me so I didn’t have to buy new IC cards, but Ming Hin and Thomas needed to buy one since it was their first time in Japan. Suica has a mascot (which is called “Suica Penguin”, it doesn’t really have a name), which is printed on most Suica IC cards. According to one of my friends who had visited Japan recently, Suica cards sold in airports did not contain the mascot, and all of us wanted the mascot. So they bought train tickets instead, and got the IC cards when we were at Shinjuku (新宿).

We boarded the Keikyu line (京急線) and transferred to the Yamanote line at Shinagawa (品川), having enough time to ride the last train to Shinjuku.

Kabukichō, also known as the “Sleepless Town”, is an entertainment district located at Shinjuku. It is also known for its plethora of nightclubs, love hotels, and bars, being a major hangout place for teenagers after hours, and you see why I was hesitant at the beginning now: Red-light district isn’t exactly the best place for staying overnight. Despite this, we still arrived at Shinjuku.

We locked our luggage in lockers located inside Shinjuku Station. The locker was somewhat affordable, but we made the dumb mistake of not locking it after 2 a.m., thus paying an extra day-worth of cost. After that, we bought some food from 7-Eleven (By the way, food in Japanese convenience stores is very well made, even as a budget meal), and set off to Kabukichō.

Kabukichō has a big red sign at the entrance, which acts doubly as a signature landmark. From there we walked inside Kabukichō, and once we walked towards the heart of Kabukichō, we were greeted with various shops, bars, restaurants, questionable people, and… tons of trash. Japan has a reputation of being a very tidy city (in fact, you will find very few trash cans in Japan, so often you will be carrying some trash with you). On the contrary, Kabukichō is a completely unmoderated realm of chaos, with cans of beer and cigarettes lying on the floor everywhere. One misstep and you will probably step on someone else’s unfinished sandwich.

While we were having some food in a giant plaza, a woman with a couple of friends came over. In English, she asked to buy our half-finished food for 500 yen (the food cost less than 500 yen). Obviously, the woman was either joking or drunk, but at that moment we were stupefied by it and didn’t respond. We didn’t make the deal, but this tells you how much of a chaos Kabukichō was.

Walking past all the people, we found a cheap karaoke inside Kabukichō, and stayed there for the night. There were some sockets for us to charge our devices, and it provided free drinks as well. We organised our baggage, charged our electronic devices, and then started singing. This was also when I decided that it would be a good idea to track my expenses (which I have never done before), so that I have something to refer to if I want to check the total cost for, say, my lunch.

While my friends sang all night long, I got tired midway and ended up falling asleep.

Day 2 - Shinjuku

28 May, 新宿 -> 高島平

I woke up feeling somewhat tired - 2 hours of sleep certainly wasn’t enough. We packed our bags and checked out from karaoke. Tommy, being an enthusiast for horse racing, had bought a ticket for a horse derby in Fuchu (府中), which is somewhat far away from Shinjuku.

We had some breakfast at Gusto Cafe. While I went with a traditional Gyudon, some stepped up a notch and ordered grilled meat for breakfast. After that, while the horse enthusiast headed towards Fuchu, the rest of us stayed for a tour around the local landscape of Shinjuku.

We basically did a big tour of Shinjuku, wandered around aimlessly and visited locations along the way.

Shinjuku Station is a massive amalgamation of multiple stations, tallying up to over 200 exits. The railway system in Tokyo, being one of the most complex around the world, comprises multiple companies and has more than 40 different lines. This means that there can be multiple stations with the same name, at the same location, all run by different companies.

Of course, you cannot directly transfer from, say, the Yamanote Line run by JR, to the Keikyu line run by Keikyu. While you can transfer between different lines run by the same company, direct transfer between companies is usually not allowed. However, some stations are connected by pedestrian tunnels. Stations from different companies can also be connected to facilitate transfer between two different railway systems. Some stations, such as Shinjuku Station, also have an easy way to transfer between different companies easily. A single set of ticket gates are placed between the stations of different companies, acting as a permeable barrier. This set of gates performs two functions: it acts as the exit gate of one company, but also acts as the entry gate of another. Essentially, this combines the two sets of exit / entry ticket gates into a single one. The ticket gates also connect the station of two companies, allowing seamless interchange between two lines from different companies.

This results in Shinjuku Station, the monstrous complex made up of multiple stations from different companies and also connected to 5 adjacent stations.

Right outside the east exit of JR Shinjuku Station is the famous 3D billboard with the calico cat. Standing at the right angle, you will be able to see a 3D picture of the cat. There is also a show every 15 minutes to demonstrate the capability of the billboard. We took a couple of pictures and then set off to other places.

We visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building Observatories (what a mouthful!), which allows us to see the skyline of Tokyo from a really high place, for free. There is also a piano in the observatory. Pianists can play pieces on it freely to express their musical talents. We heard quite a number of pieces, ranging from classical etudes to contemporary pop songs. It was a good place to sit back and relax, enjoying the view from high above… if it wasn’t for the fact that me and my friends underslept. We almost fell asleep while sitting on the observation deck.

Following a massive underground tunnel, we went east and entered Omoide Yokochō (思い出横丁), a Yokochō dated back to the post-war period. The street is full of reminiscences of the old days and filled with Showa-period-styled bars. It was a trip back to the old era of Japan, with decorations resembling the styles back in the past.

Exiting the Yokochō. We set off to Isetan (伊勢丹), which was organising a bread bazaar nicknamed ISEPAN! (パン or pan means bread in Japanese). It was a terrible pun, but at least the bread was good. The aroma of the bread was pleasant, and I would have bought some bread if it wasn’t due to the very long queue. Bosco bought a bunch of bread, all for the ultimate goal of getting a photograph. Even though the objective was somewhat questionable, the bread he purchased was of high quality and very soft. The biggest issue though, was that he had purchased too much bread. As a result, we spent the next few days chomping on bread before the bread expired.

ISEPAN! aside, Isetan is a relatively large and popular shopping complex. Being a childish dude, I suggested visiting the floor with toys, and saw a 3D version of Gomoku (Five in a Row). I was then completely beaten by the AI on the easiest difficulty, and also got defeated by Thomas. Never again.

Leaving Isetan, we came across a massive event: the Hanazono Shrine Annual Festival.

A few days earlier, we noticed that there would be a massive celebration in the Hanazono Shrine (花園神社). The event started at 10 a.m. in the shrine, but by the time we arrived it was well past 10 a.m.. We just assumed that we missed the ceremony, and did a quick tour around the Hanazono Shrine. We saw the mikoshis (神輿, Portable Shrine) placed inside the Hanazono Shrine, as well as numerous food stalls scattered around the Hanazono Shrine. We didn’t buy any food but still enjoyed the festival happening inside the shrine.

When we were walking on the street, we couldn’t help but notice a few very suspicious things:

1. There were people wearing special outfits, representing different chome (丁目, district) in Shinjuku.
2. Traffic lights were turned off completely, making the road a free-to-roam area for people.
3. There was an unusual amount of people.

That is when we saw the swarm of people, carrying the mikoshis we saw earlier in the shrine. There were two people walking in front of everyone else: One was carrying a white cloth, while the other was carrying a lantern. Both of them swayed in a diagonal fashion. Everyone else - even including children! - was either carrying the mikoshi, or surrounding the mikoshi. There was also a person blowing into a whistle, striking two wooden sticks to command everyone else’s movement. The lifters of mikoshi were shaking the mikoshi up and down while slowly stepping forward, and everyone was chanting loudly and energetically. It cranked the atmosphere in Shinjuku up to max, and as everyone was submerged in this ceremony to praise the God of fertility, the vitality spread everywhere to all pedestrians and observers.

We stopped to check out the ceremony, and after that we headed out for lunch. There was a popular and delicious ramen shop called “Ramen Hayashida” (I visited the shop on my first trip), but owing to unfortunate timing, it was closed for the day, so we sought alternatives.

We had our lunch in Hakata Furyu (博多風龍) which specialises at tonkotsu ramen (豚骨拉麵). Funny enough, it isn’t established in Hakata, where the famous Hakata ramen originated from. The soup is the essential part of a bowl of ramen, and I think Hakata Furyu handled the soup pretty well. Besides, the price is low, the chashu pork has a great texture, and you can even get refills for free (I didn’t though). It was a decent choice for lunch.

The Tokyu Kabukichō Tower is a recently opened attraction located back in Kabukichō, being directly adjacent to the karaoke we visited earlier. Inside we found an ARG / room-escape game called “THE TOKYO MATRIX”, themed after Sword Art Online. It seemed like a pretty fun experience, but a lot of people were queuing up. I was also worried about the possibility of failing the mission and not enjoying the full experience. As a result, we didn’t join the activity (It was possible to make reservations, but we didn’t know about this place, it was all walk-in).

At this point, we had finished most attractions in Shinjuku and were out of ideas. We didn’t want to go to another area since all our luggage was locked in Shinjuku Station, but Tommy was still in Fuchu. I visited an arcade to play some rhythm games, while Bosco and Thomas sat at a garden on top of Shinjuku station (Ming Hin followed me to watch me play games).

We met up with Tommy in Shinjuku, unlocked the lockers (paying the extra fine) and retrieved our belongings. After that, we rode all the way to Takashimadaira (高島平). We stayed in Palette Takashimadaira, which would be our place of residence for the next five days.

After we arrived at the apartment, we saw a notice pinned on a board. The notice could be summarised as “We are closed, do the check-in work yourself,” which didn’t seem like a good thing? Anyways, we grabbed a key from the bottom box, and then moved upstairs before realising that the key we had was for the wrong room. We then spent the next 15 minutes figuring out what we should do. Tommy sent a message to the office, while Ming Hin went downstairs and discovered that we took the key from the wrong box, which was clearly meant for back-up keys. We returned the wrong key and got the actual key from the top box and finally got into our apartment.

Home sweet home! Despite the rusty appearance of the door, the inside was relatively clean. It’s got all the basic things we needed: beds, a kettle (though slightly rusty), free WiFi, and a television. The best thing about the apartment though, is that it is very spacious. We stayed in hotels for our last trip to Tokyo, and the hotel didn’t have much wriggle room for walking around. We were lying in bed most of the time. For apartments though, even though all of us were living in the same room, the size was much bigger than a traditional hotel room. The tables were much bigger, there were more rooms for moving around, and there was even a sofa for watching the TV.

It had been a rough day (or two days) walking around, and we had not showered for two days. However, we still haven’t had dinner yet. We quickly unpacked our luggage and belongings and left our apartment for food.

It was getting dark, so we ate at a Chinese restaurant nearby. I ordered fried rice with ramen, it was decent. The staff in Chinese restaurants generally knows Mandarin, so if you happen to know how to speak Mandarin, you can talk to them directly, no fuss.

We bought some supplies (food and drinks) in a store nearby. The water is pretty cheap so we bought a lot of them. After that we went back to our apartment and went to bed.

Day 3 - Neighbourhood

29 May, 高島平 -> 東京大佛 -> 大山 -> 池袋 -> 高島平

For this trip, we did not have a concrete schedule of where to visit. Instead, we had a map of locations that we planned to visit, and a rough idea of when to visit them. The schedule for each day was only decided a few days prior, sometimes on-the-spot.

Having no fixed schedule can be problematic for people who prefer planning ahead, but the advantage of not having a fixed schedule is its flexibility, and it’s proven to be useful in our trip. A fixed schedule is susceptible to unpredictable changes during the trip. If we made reservations or bought tickets prior to the trip, cancelling events may prove to be problematic. Without a dedicated timetable, we can visit the locations in any order as we like. If we still have spare time after visiting the locations, we can add more locations for that day’s schedule. If we are falling behind, we can postpone or cancel locations that are less important. And in the case of special events such as bad weather, we can completely demolish our schedule and rebuild it. This helped a lot in our trip and its advantage was most prominent on Day 7 (2 June).

We had a rough list of locations that we wanted to visit, which included other prefectures near Tokyo. For some of those locations, we planned to get there using Shinkansen (新幹線, bullet train). Since Shinkansen is pretty expensive, we would be buying the JR TOKYO Wide Pass, which includes 3-day unlimited travel on trains and Shinkansen. Thus, we needed to select 3 continuous days when we would visit locations outside Tokyo.

In the end, we had a rough outline of the schedule to other prefectures:

• Saitama (さいたま / 埼玉*) on Day 4 (30 May)
• Yokohama (横浜) and Kamakura (鎌倉) on Day 7 (2 June)
• Remaining prefectures on Day 10 - 12 (5 - 7 June)

*Saitama is one of the few cities that uses hiragana. However, the Saitama District uses kanji.

If you have a very good memory, you may recall that neither Yokohama nor Kamakura is present in the overview. The short answer is that it got cancelled. I will explain that in more details on Day 7 (2 June).

Anyways, after a good night’s sleep, we began exploring Tokyo by starting with our neighbourhood. We started with the Tokyo Daibutsu (東京大仏), a bronze statue of Buddha located at Itabashi (板橋). It was about a 30-minute walk from where we lived. Along the way, we got to observe our neighbourhood a bit closer: Itabashi was not known to be an attraction spot, so nearly everyone in Itabashi were regular citizens, students or elderly people. Japan, having a high life expectancy, had a severe population ageing problem across the nation. As a result, there were a lot of elderly people in our neighbourhood.

We also saw a 7-Eleven along the way. What stood out was its banner, which was entirely black-and-white.

After visiting the Tokyo Daibutsu, we got on a bus and then switched to train, heading toward Ōyama station (大山駅).

Did you notice that for some locations in Japan, there are letters with a bar on top (e.g Ō)? That represents a long vowel sound, and it can be used to distinguish between locations such as Ōyama station and Oyama station (小山駅).

After we arrived at Ōyama station, we strolled along Happy Road, a shopping street in Ōyama. Contrary to other shopping districts, Happy Road was much more open, and its decorations were much older. In fact, Happy Road can be dated back to post-WW2, when various stalls selling foods and necessities were set up. Happy Road was also really long, spanning a total length of 540 metres.

We ate our lunch at a Sukiya nearby. Even though Sukiya was more known for its Gyudon, I went with a beef curry instead. It cost 860 yen and the size was quite big. Others went with a set instead, which is smaller, cheaper and has more variety. It would have been a better choice and I would have gone with that, if I hadn’t missed the set combo section.

After that we boarded the Tōbu Tōjō Line 東武東上線, ran by Tōbu, a different company. Three stations later we reached Ikebukuro (池袋), a major tourist attraction.

We started with the TOBU Department Store, a gigantic department store on top of the Ikebukuro Station. Tommy went straight to the section where crockeries were sold - he was trying to buy a thermal lunch box. While he didn’t find what he was looking for, Bosco bought a stack of playing cards, hoping that it would come in handy when we fancied for a game of cards (Spoiler: we never opened them). We had also found a bunch of random stuff - pranking toys, Japanese bowls, goose plushies, all kinds of things.

Along the way, we found a children’s entertainment centre. At first glance, it appeared to be your everyday amusement centre, with candy pushers and claw machines. But then, we found a Taiko no Tatsujin machine inside. We were all quite surprised by this, as you wouldn’t expect such a highly popular arcade game to sit casually inside a kids zone. Taiko no Tatsujin was a popular rhythm game in Japan (and also outside Japan), but I didn’t play it during my last trip. Hence, I played a few rounds of taiko with my friends. It seemed that many kids played it and smashed the drums really hard, as the taiko drum for 1P was faulty. Fortunately, I was playing on 2P so I did relatively well. I can’t say the same for the 1P player though…

We have also visited a bookshop. Even though none of us could read Japanese, some of us knew Katakana and Kanji, and that was usually enough to understand simple sentences. We also came across a very confusing sentence: 360°Cビュー

We would buy books from Japan, yet our incompetence in Japanese barred us from doing that. All we could do was to sit on the chairs next to the shop and have a rest.

We finally stepped outside into the main streets. It was also at this point when the weather started turning bad and it started raining. Taking out the umbrellas, we did a tour around the streets of Ikebukuro, gradually moving from the west side to the east.

We paid a visit to Tower Records, a major music retail chain in Japan. Amazingly, even after the proliferation of online streaming services, CD sales are still holding strong in Japan, accounting for a large percentage of music revenue. Inside the store you can still buy various discs released by various artists (mainly Japanese), or listen to some of the selected CDs via headphones.

After that we visited BOOKOFF, the largest chain of second-hand bookstores in Japan. Don’t be misled by its name though, as they also sell other second-hand items, including audio CDs, video games and even plushies. BOOKOFF has two floors: 3/F is for second-handed books, and 2/F is for the rest. Seeing that we did not know Japanese, we mainly focused on 2/F, though we still checked out 3/F and saw some familiar titles.

We spent some time browsing the shelves on 2/F, hoping to find treasures among all the second-hand items. BOOKOFF (and pretty much every second-hand store) had a junk / uncategorized section, where all kinds of items could be found. Some items in this section might be damaged, but items in this section generally had a very low cost, possibly as low as 100 yen. On the other hand, the section was completely unorganised, forcing you to dig through tons of items before finding any potential treasure.

For the discs, they were generally sorted according to the composer or the name of the series. Even though knowing these could help you find specific CDs faster, I still enjoy browsing each item and seeing if I can find anything interesting. You may also find other items such as figures or models in the store. They were broadly sorted, but you still need to inspect them one by one to find specific items.

This time, Tommy and Bosco had bought some items, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough for a tax refund. There is a 10% sales tax in Japan, but it is possible to waive the tax in some stores. For those stores, if you have purchased 5500 yen worth of items after tax, you can ask them for a tax refund. They would ask you for your passport, and then you can enjoy the tax refund. When we were purchasing items that were more expensive, we would try to reach the threshold for a tax refund (5500 yen), but it ultimately depended on how much we were buying.

The BOOKOFF we were visiting and the Tower Records we visited earlier provides tax-free shopping, but this does not apply to all stores in the same retail chain. Generally, they can only be found near tourist attraction spots.

We would have gone back to Ikebukuro and enjoyed some sushi… if it wasn’t for various reasons: it was raining, we were far away from the restaurant, we wanted somewhere to sit, and there was no chair for the restaurant (which means standing up while eating). In the end, we stuck with Saizeriya, a Japanese chain of italian-styled restaurants.

We had Saizeriya on my last trip to Japan, but I don’t really mind having it again. What stands out was its low cost: 600 yen for a Doria and a couple slices of pizza is a great bargain. Personally, I recommend its Doria, being an economical but good food for your tummy. It also provides other dishes such as spaghetti and grilled meat, but I still find Doria to be the best choice out of all.

After the dinner, we parted ways again, even though we were still in the same building. While Tommy and Bosco went upstairs to hunt for goods in BOOKOFF, the rest of us went downstairs to visit the arcade.

Before the trip, me and Thomas had a simple deal: Thomas would play CHUNITHM (an arcade rhythm game) if I finished Bocchi the Rock! (a manga series adapted to anime) before the trip to Japan. Funny enough, in the middle of May, CHUNITHM had a time-limited collaboration with Bocchi the Rock!, and it was happening during our trip! Prime example of perfect timing. For the collaboration, you can collect characters from Bocchi the Rock! by progressing in the in-game map in CHUNITHM. However, an Aime card is needed to store all your game data and progress in the map. An Aime card costs 300 yen and can be bought in machines in the arcade.

All three of us played a round of CHUNITHM: Thomas played to fulfil his promise, and Ming Hin played as he wanted to try the game. Since Thomas did not own a card, he couldn’t progress in the in-game map. I owned a card and could save my records, so I progressed in the in-game map and collected Nijika (I had collected Hitori on Day 2 in Shinjuku).

We met up again after Tommy and Bosco finished their pursuit. We went back to Takashimadaira and bought some more food (including a bunch of bananas) and drinks from a convenience store nearby. After that we went back to our apartment, ate some snacks and went to bed.