Because of cheap ZipAir tickets, we took a flight to Tokyo only some 6 months after our last trip. This inevitably led me to compare the two trips. So, for fun, this trip report is written in a "Versus" style (some of these versus comparisons are tongue-in-cheek so please don't take this too seriously):
- Summer versus Winter: December was generally cold but drier, June hotter, humid and rainier. Definitely prefer Winter, because I hate having wet shoes from heavy summer rains. Wife and I both ended up buying $20USD water proof shoes from Donki and sale items at Gu. Wife got blisters from hers, I did not. While I definitely prefer winter, the days were shorter. In Summer the sun rose at like 5am in Tokyo. I found humidity in late June was just bearable: stay out of the sun though (shade, sun umbrella, hat) it feels scorching hot. Winner: Winter.
- Shinjuku versus Ueno for home base: While I enjoyed the character of Ueno more with its variety of shops and lively feel, Shinjuku can't be beat for location. It felt like almost all cities we wanted to visit were very close by subway (at most 30 minutes), whereas Ueno felt off center with some things closer and some things further. I should mention though that Shinjuku has no Shinkansen, while Ueno's Shin-Ueno station is very close to Ueno Station. Ueno is great if you are taking a lot of Shinkansen. I would vote for Shinjuku for its convenience visiting other places. Add to this, Shinjuku near Korea Town was particularly lively and fun even for families, under cutting Ueno a bit.
- Red Tokyo Tower versus Joypolis: Joypolis is a unique all indoor theme park with roller coasters with games integrated into them. So cool! However, the Joypolis experience ended up being very frustrating for us because everything had a long line, even on a weekday afternoon. Shortest line was 30 minutes for anything resembling an experience and longest was over 2 hours long. Red Tokyo Tower was practically empty on the weekday afternoon when we went and while the experience were overall more chill (think a lot of casual AR games with some VR mixed in) the fact that we could play everything multiple times often without waiting, made the experience a lot more enjoyable. Joypolis is definitely the more fancy, cooler place but we ended up having a better experience at Red Tokyo Tower. Make sure to play the Human Tetris game! But if you can magically find a time when Joypolis is empty…
- Reservations versus Walk-Ins: We failed at making many reservations: 1) We waited too long to make reservations and they were full. 2) We tried to make reservations as soon as they opened and they were full almost immediately. 3) We requested a reservation and the restaurant rejected our request. Basically, we only succeeded to get reservations at places that release huge batches of reservations at once (Ghibli Museum, for example) or places that weren't popular. Or we made the reservation and the restaurant lost our reservation (ahem, OpenTable). Not only that, the few times we had reservations we ended up rushing away from some other place to make the reservation and the stress was often not worth it. Our Shinkansen reservation also made us have to go to the ticket counter to change our reservation time, wasting a bunch of time trying to find the ticket office and waiting in line. My favorite meal was a random restaurant we found on Google that we just walked into. Also, going to moderately popular restaurants very early (eating "lunch" at 10am or "dinner" at 4:30pm) worked out OK to avoid crowds. Overall, walk-ins definitely won: less frustrating, more flexible, and often just as good.
- 1 Family Suite Hotel Room versus 2 Business Hotel Rooms: We have a family of 4 and 2 business hotel rooms was often cheaper than "suite" style hotel room (hotel room with 3-4 beds, refrigerator, and often small kitchen). Both were very comfortable and as we didn't spend much time in our hotel room it was mainly about sleeping and getting ready. 2 business hotel rooms meant 2 showers and 2 toilets! But it also meant shuffling back and forth between rooms required going outside and unlocking a door (business hotel rooms don't have interconnecting doors, at least none we could find.) We would hang out in one room until bedtime then split up. Winner? Can I call it a tie? There were pros and cons to each but we were surprised 2 Business Hotel Rooms was a viable option.
- TeamLabs Borderless versus TeamLabs Planets: I found Borderless pretty boring: how many rooms can you have that are just non-interactive projections on walls? Only 1 room was interesting to me, while I loved the sensory and uniqueness of each room and hallway in Planets. Winner: Planets. But, to my shock and surprise, my wife and kids liked Borderless more! They loved running around randomly in different directions and drawing their own fish. I guess it boils down to personal preference.
- Tokyo versus Osaka: This one is tongue in cheek, because Tokyo offers so much more in terms of quantity and variety of experiences because it's so much bigger. But Osaka has its charms, but if you were genuinely deciding between Tokyo and Osaka for a first trip, Tokyo wins hands down. That said, my favorite experience of the trips happened in Osaka.
- Shinkansen versus Plane: Plane for intra-Japan travel is much cheaper than train and often faster. Shinkansen, however, is much more flexible with many long distance trains departing many times within the hour. Additionally, many of the smaller intra-Japan airlines have Japanese only websites which makes buying tickets quite confusing even with Google Translate. Plus, getting to the airport and going through security can take extra time. I say Shinkansen wins but not overwhelmingly. I have to add, most Ekiben we ran into were really not that great, so unless you really plan ahead and find the best Ekiben, don't think you're guaranteed to have an amazing meal on Shinkansen via some random Ekiben shop.
- Cash versus Credit Card: Despite the old school reputation that Japan is still cash based, we used Credit Card for almost everything. Credit Card machines in Japan are largely *not* integrated with the point of sales machines, which means the cashier has to ring up the sale, you have to tell them credit card, then they have to go to a different credit card machine and manually enter the sale amount there. You run the card then you get 2 receipts: Credit Card receipt and Point of Sale receipt. There were some rare places that were cash only: gacha machines and refilling IC cards comes to mind. Some very small bakeries or carnival stands were also cash only. Credit Card is definitely the winner, with IC cards being the runner up (for buying drinks from vending machines and paying for lockers. When you use IC card for a locker, it remembers who you are, making retrieval easier.) However, you will still need cash, if for nothing else than refilling your IC card.
- Revisiting Japan versus Going Somewhere Else: I had a spreadsheet of activities to do in Tokyo and I definitely didn't do a lot of them on our first trip. Our second trip, we got to do many of the things on the list we didn't do the first time, found some new things, and revisited some favorites. It definitely felt comfortable and we sort of knew how things worked like the subways, navigating, taxis, etc. A metropolis like Tokyo can definitely be revisited many times and it's fun to be both feel comfortable and discover new things. That said, there are also many countries in the world I'd like to visit and going somewhere new has its own delights. Can I call it a tie? I really didn't "mind" going back to Tokyo as much as I thought I would (I was pushing to go somewhere new, but my wife wanted to go back to Tokyo.) My opinion definitely shifted.
That's it! Many of these "versus" comparisons were just for fun, a different way to think about two trips. Please don't take them too seriously.
by DoomGoober