I went to Tokyo! My friend and I had been talking about her coming to visit a while back, and a couple months ago we finally made solid plans and booked things. We’re just hanging around Tokyo for the most part, since it’s her first time here, and also exploring some of the more touristy stuff and chilling. I’ve been to Tokyo before, but it was my first time without family, and it’s just kind of a different vibe, you know? I planned the trip during the week that my kids are on their spring break, or the break between school years, since Japan, and wider Asia, start and end school in the spring. That way I wouldn’t have to miss any school, and also not have to deskwarm as much either. My trip was for about a week, so I’m splitting the trip into a few different posts for length sake!
March 25th: My flight was around 2, and so my boyfriend and I headed for Sapporo early in the morning to have some leeway before our flight. Coincidentally, my boyfriend also had a separate Tokyo trip planned with his friends, and we were taking the same flight to Tokyo (though I booked it first). He’s staying for three weeks though, whereas I’m only going for one. We had a bit of leeway time before heading to the airport, and I was hungry by the time we got to Sapporo. My first stop was The Alley, to get some boba before heading off and as a morning drink. They’re currently having a new Rich Milk series, and I wanted to get their matcha drink.
After we bought our drinks, we got on the soonest train to the Airport, and arrived around noon. Both of us had already checked in online, and so all we needed to do was drop off our bags using the self-service bag drop. There was a big of a line, but the line itself went quickly, which was pretty efficient. I wanted to grab some food in the lobby area before security, but my boyfriend wanted to have some leeway and not enter a super long security line. It doesn’t hurt to not be in a rush, and we also figured we could get some food post-security. It turns out, security here is super efficient, and literally look like a minute, which was crazy. With two hours left until our flight, we walked around the terminal, and got lunch at the food court area. My boyfriend got a miso ramen, and I got a yakiniku do. I also went and bought my friend a Hokkaido souvenir while I was at it.
Our flight was delayed for about 5 minutes, and out gate changed twice (the second time it was back to the original, ha!), but otherwise pretty soon after, we got on to our plane and took a short flight to Haneda Airport! After picking up our bags, we headed to Terminal 1 (we landed in Terminal 2). My goal was to get a Starbucks, since the new Cola Frappucino came out recently, and I had a free drink coupon from buying a tumbler. The Cola frapp was pretty good! It did taste pretty syrup-y, though also very Cola-y at the same time, and felt like drinking a slightly melty frozen Cola drink. There was some kind of syrup drizzled on top of the coffee flavored whip cream, which was an interesting addition, but overall, it was a unique experience and would get again if it was a longer-term item.
After we picked up our drinks (again), my boyfriend went to try to check in to his hotel reservation early, since he was staying the night in the airport because his friend was landing the day after. We stopped by the hotel, and when we were finished, hopped on the free airport bus to Terminal 3 where I would wait for my friend to land. At that point we had another couple hours to kill, so I went to explore the newly built Haneda Airport Garden shopping center attached to Terminal 3. It was pretty cool looking, and very chic, with a variety of shops, restaurants, and a hotel and a spa! After we walked a bit, I wanted to show off how amazing the international terminal was to my boyfriend (I love Haneda’s departure lobby and the Edo town!), and we also walked around for a bit then. At some point, we were just kind of tired, and sat down on a bench for an hour or so until I started getting updates from my friend.
I met up with her, and my boyfriend left to get on the last bus to Terminal 1, a little before 8, and then off on an hour train trip to our hotel in Tokyo we went! I figured we’d get to our hotel pretty late, since she landed around 6:30 and had to get through immigration and customs, and in preparation for that, I made a reservation for an izakaya down the street from our hotel. After checking in, we dropped off our bags, stopped by a supermarket to go soymilk hunting and get some water and snacks, and then made our way to the izakaya. It was a really cool place, with a hideen bathroom behind a wall that looked like part of the alcohol shelf, and we ate lots of chicken dishes, from yakitori to chicken soup based items.
March 26th: This was our first full day in Tokyo, and our main itinerary for the day was going strawberry picking, visiting the Ghibli museum, and then just hanging around the area. We slept in a bit, and then on our way to the train station, stopped by another supermarket and a 7/11 for more soymilk hunting and snacks. We rode the train to Kichijoji station, which was close to the strawberry farm, and also where a cafe we wanted to go to was. As our breakfast of sorts, we went to Aoyama Flower Market Tea House, a really cute tea cafe, and each got a drink set. I got their strawberry tea paired with their cream puff. The cream puff was nice and fluffy, and I appreciated the flowers in it that gave it an occasional new flavor. I was very happy with the tea I chose, with it being just a bit naturally sweet and smelling of strawberries, but also still tasting like a normal tea at the same time. I also tried my friend’s rose jelly, and it had such an interesting flavor. It wasn’t super overpowering floral-y, but worked perfectly in jelly form.
After our morning tea on a cold rainy morning, we headed for Ichigo house to go strawberry picking, or translated from Japanese, strawberry hunting. I heard about this place after watching a YouTube video, and ever since have been wanting to go. Fruit generally is expensive here, and since strawberries are nearing the end of their season here right now, I really wanted to take my friend here. The farm itself had around 9 types of strawberries to pick from, some looked very different, some not so much. It was a pretty rainy day, and for a place that opens at 10:30, even when we arrived at 11 it was pretty crowded. We checked in at the reception desk, and entered all of the individual greenhouses, using scissors to cut off ripe strawberries and put them in our boxes. This place charges by 100 grams, and at the end we collectively collected 3 boxes worth. After paying, we sat down in their small seating area and started snacking after our hunt, and oh my gosh, they were literally the best and most perfect strawberries I’ve ever tasted. I can’t ever go back. What was actually crazy was that some of the red ones actually tasted different from each other, and had different textures. I kind of wish we got a different box and label for each different type, but we enjoyed them nonetheless. Particularly, the ripe white strawberries had the most different flavor and texture to them. They were softer, and tasted more berry-like than the other strawberries. It was like we had boxes of just the best of the best strawberies, and none of them were duds, since we hand-picked them ourselves. We consolidated our leftovers into 2 boxes, and would snack on them the rest of the trip.
We were hungry for an actual meal and warm food at this point, so we headed for a ramen shop kind of near the Ghibli Museum a bit away. The place is called Ramen Himawari, and technically they sell Chuka Soba, but it’s closer to ramen than any Chinese-style noodle. I thought their selection here was pretty unique, and I got their basic shoyu ramen. The soup was clear and very warming, and the noodles were so unique! They were thin, chewy, and very like my ideal ramen noodle. The bamboo in the ramen was one long strip, similar to the type that my mom buys at home, and was super tender and sweet. The chashu was the most unique looking one I’ve ever seen, with it being like a sliced ham, and super tender and thin. Amazing experience, would go again, and would love to try their other stuff.
By the time we finished it was around 1, and I had hoped that they would let us in early since our entrance time was technically at 3. They were being pretty strict about it though, and said that we would have to come back exactly at 3. I really should have gotten the reservation at 2, but what was done was done, so we sat in a nearby cafe for a bit to escape the rain. It was cute, but the selection wasn’t very my friend-friendly with her dietary restrictions, and she felt like we had to get something, so we left and headed into a lawson to use the bathroom. Purely out of coincidence and looking for another cafe on Google Maps, I found a vegan cafe in the other direction, and it looked pretty promising, so we headed there. Sui Kitchen and Cafe is run by an older woman, and the shop itself looks like it was in a home in a pretty residential area. The cafe was super comfortable and homey, and we were even offered slippers to wear inside. For a place with vegan food a lot of their pastries of the day looked really good, and since we weren’t going for a lunch, we order a slice of the tomato foccacia and the banana cake. The foccacia was really good, a bit of cheesy flavor on top and the tomatoes worked well, and the texture was super fluffy. We both agreed that it would have been better warmed up at the very least, but it was a good snack nonetheless. It came with an interesting side of orange and pickled carrots, which is a nice pop of color, but the flavors did not go together at all. The banana cake was ok; i appreciated that I didn’t taste the coconut on top, but the inside was a little dry, and had rainsins, which I’m not a huge fan of. It did come with a side of strawberries and honey, and you can’t go wrong with those.
We spent quite a while just chilling, and before we knew it, 3 o’clock rolled up, and we headed back to the Ghibli Museum, finally for our turn. Now I had been before and had seen most of it, but it was super cool to see everything again. There was also a new temporary exhibit that wasn’t there before, which made it add to the experience of going again. Along those lines, the museum-exclusive short film always rotates out, and we saw a caterpillar one, different than the one I saw last time. Towards the end we got fried chicken and fries from the cafe just to say we got food from there, and headed out after feeling satisfied with seeing everything around 5. By then the rain had mostly stopped, which was a great for us for getting away from it in the museum.
With no real plans for the rest of the day other than hang around and explore Kichijoji, which I heard is a trendy neighborhod, we walked around Inkoashira park back to the main station area. There was a lot of cool looking food and snack stands, and I definitely want to go back sometime. We walked by Iseya, a famous yakitori place in the area, and because it smelled so good, we stopped by for a couple skewers as a snack. Then we headed up a shopping street, and did some window shopping in the cool stores there. A lot of the clothes were super pretty and appealing, but not very wallet-friendly…We entered Petit Mura, which is a little area with a cat cafe, and a couple other shops that has a whimsical Ghibli-esque feel to it. It was pretty cool, but also gives touristy vibes. We also stopped by a stationary store that sold unique looking items, but again, we didn’t get anything. On our way back to the main station area, we picked up some matcha at a shop called Capoon; my friend got a hot latte, and I wanted to try their matcha float. With the rich matcha ice cream on top, milk as a base, and some matcha syrup drizzled throughout, it was a dedacent, but amazing matcha drink.
We headed back to the station area to explore some of the shopping streets, roamed around, and even walked through the tiny izakaya maze that is Harmonica Alley. Those were pretty cool, but not really our thing, and we wanted to get some udon as our last meal before heading back to the hotel. Of course we went to Ibuki, a famous udon place under the train tracks that serves fast food udon. I got the cold kake udon with maitake tempura. That was super refreshing, being able to customize my toppings with tempura bits and fried fish, and the light broth went so well with the super chewy fresh udon noodles and the light, crispy mushroom tempura.
March 27th: This was our Disney Sea day! Again, I had gone before with my family, but it was a rainy day and Disney vibes with the family is just different. It took us an hour by train to get to Disney from our hotel, with us just barely making a Disney bus from Shinjuku station.
When we arrived at the park, there was a pretty big line just for security, and then after that was the ticket gate. After entering, we picked up some black pepper popcorn from a nearby snack stand (all the popcorn in the part are different flavors!), and we figured we should get one long line/popular ride out of the way first before moving on to the rest of the day. We went for Journey to the Center of the Earth, which had an estimated wait time of 2 hours according to the app (we found that it was sometimes accurate and sometimes not). The weird thing is, the app is advertised to be somwhere where you can reserve Standby passes and see wait times, but it seemed they discoutinued the Standy passes and only have the monetary Premier Passes (which kind of defeats the purpose? Why was it still in the app?). This one is one of the best rides in Disney Sea in my opinion, though we did wait quite a while and were quite hungry by the time we got out. Weirdly enough Soarin and Toy Story Mania had an even more insane line, according to the app, and what we saw of the Soarin line. We have both of those back in California Adventure, and we weren’t too keen on going on those.
We were planning on going on the Indiana Jones ride next, and so we got some food from a food stand near the ride. We each got a spicy chicken leg, and a Sparkling Mango Tapioca Tea. The chicken wasn’t too spicy, which was a hit for me, and was piping hot and super juicy. I’d go for another one really.
We finished our food, and got in the Indiana Jones line, which took a bit (as lines go). We realized that this ride had a single rider option, and that it eventually merged back into the line at some point, so we could have saved some time by using that. After looking up what other rides have single riders, it really only was Indiana Jones and Raging Spirits, which was right next door. When we were done, we immediately went into the Raging Spirits single rider line, which shortened our wait significantly. It was a decent ride, a little short, but I do appreciate that the 360 loop wasn’t that scary. My friend wanted to do something relaxing after, so we rode the Sinbad’s Storybook Adventure ride, which played a really catchy tune with really good animatronics on a peaceful boat ride along a water path.
I was very tempted by churros at a nearby stand, so we stopped for a snack, and I ended up getting th Sultan’s Sundae while my friend got a chai churro. I loved the mango sauce and pudding, alongside the softserve ice cream. The churro had good seasoning, but was a little stale, but I guess that’s what happens when they’re left out.
For whatever reason, Aquatopia was close in the morning, but a few hours later it opened for operation. I really wanted to go on that one, so I was happy to hear that they opened for the day. We headed over there to ride that, and the wait thankfully wasn’t too long. Then we rode 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was actually pretty cool with the underwater effects. My friend said she was interested in riding the small train that goes from the Port area to the American Waterfront, and since I was on the hunt for the toy story mochi which was being sold there, it worked out perfectly as our last real attraction there. I finally got my Toy Story mochi (they were cute and very good) that I didn’t find the last time, and we decided we saw and did everything we wanted so we headed out around 5.
My friend was feeling a bit tired, and so at first we thought that we would go back to the hotel first and then grab dinner somewhere in the area. We had to exit the park first, and to get to the station that leads home we passed by the Ikspiari mall. We decided it’d be more convenient to get food then since there were restaurant choices available, and then we wouldn’t have to leave the hotel once we got back. I asked her to pick what looked good, and we ended up eating at Monsoon Cafe, a Southeast Asian fusion eatery. She got the pho, and I opted to try their chashu pineapple fried rice, which although is spicy on the menu, was not bad when I actually tried it. Perfect level of spice for me.
Japan Excursions 
Leave a comment