Tokyo and Kyoto first trip w/ food allergy

Hi all! I feel like there are multiple awesome trip review posts going up every day, so I thought I should contribute to the knowledge, given how much this sub has helped me! Also – I’m not even halfway through my flight to London and sadly I can’t seem to fall asleep right now 🙃

**CONTEXT**

We are a couple in our early 30s. We have lived in small and big cities (including NYC) across the world so the scale of Tokyo wasn’t unfamiliar to us (not that it wasn’t impressive, just not intimidating). We care about architecture/space/urban life so especially our Tokyo we prioritized walking around, finding cool buildings/sights to look at and avoiding touristy things as much as possible. Lastly, I can’t eat shrimp, so we had to take that into consideration when eating out.

**TRIP**

* London to Haneda with JAL
* Stay in Tokyo (Shimbashi station area) for 3 nights
* Take shinkanshen to Kyoto, stay there for the night
* Back to Tokyo for 3 nights (Shibuya area)
* JAL flight back to Heathrow Total was 7 nights in Japan, but we flew out on a Friday morning (landing Saturday morning in Japan) so technically 8 days away from home.

**FLIGHTS**

According to our research, the economy seats with JAL were supposedly more confortable. Facts. The trip was MUCH more comfortable than a similar-ish duration I’ve done recently with Lufthansa, and I’m on the smaller side.

Fun fact: Heading to Tokyo, the plane took us south of Russian border (across Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, China, South Korea), and now it has also taken us eastwards (above the Arctic), which means we have sort of toured the world? 😜 Planes are awesome.

**TOKYO part 1**

We cleared customs fast (we had done the Fast Track online thing already). I was sort of bracing myself for USA-style customs lines but thankfully it felt like a breeze, we barely had to do anything.

Tip 📌 Take a long scrolling screenshot of your Fast Track page on your phone, this is what they mostly want to see (if its blue, you are good to go). We had to scan the QR codes after we got our luggage at some machines near the exit.

Very quickly, we:

* Verified our WISE debit card works and withdraws from the correct currency account (scroll down for more info on our money setup)
* Found an ATM and withdrew some cash
* Got us Suica cards and topped them up
* Were on our way to the city, I forget which line, but basically followed Google maps.

We got to the hotel, were lucky enough to be able to go to our room earlier than expected, settled down, got our first onigiris (the first I tried has remained my favourite throughout the trip: the seawood one from Family Mart) and thought we should maybe sleep for a little bit before venturing out to walk. I was worried we’d sleep for like hours and wake up in the middle of the night but after around 10 alarms we got up before the sun set and started walking around the Imperial Palace and Ginza. It was suuuuuper windy and the palace area was empty, which made it pretty magical. We checked out our first Bic Camera stores, attempted to count how many Starbucks we encounter but promptly gave up, and headed back towards Shimbashi to have some ramen (perfect night for that). Obviously half of Tokyo had the same thought so we ended up waiting a lot at Ichiran but it was so worth it! I go the light broth which was really flavorful and an extra egg. It was a bit odd to sit next to each other with the dividers but many couples were there so we went for it, it was fun! Returned to hotel and thankfully passed out for many hours.

Next couple of days were sort of similar: we have a Google map of buildings and sights to see, so we usually walk from one to the other, getting snacks as needed and having dinner at the end of the day somewhere. We decided to skip any museums or big touristy venues, other than Tsukiji market and Meiji shrine, both of which were memorable but quite packed (especially the fish market – people were really hustling to get fed). We especially loved the side streets, and how quiet they were. If you are reading this and want to hit up architecture spots, DM me and I can share the map.

**KYOTO**

We asked the hotel to ship our luggage to our next Tokyo accommodation while we were in Kyoto, which was a major tip I read on this sub and so worth it. We thus embarked on the shinkanshen with just two backpacks, which felt great.

This train is so spacious! We were lucky to catch some good glimpses of Fuji on our way to Kyoto, what a perfect sight. Literally as if Hokusai painted it into the horizon, and not the other way around.

Spent the morning and afternoon walking around – lots of tourists in Nishiki, Arashiyama and bamboo forrest and Fushimi Inari. Kinda made it hard to enjoy tbh. We had booked a ryokan for the night, which was in the outskirts of the city. Wow. It was nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. The location was magical, and the hotel staff were amazing, they made sure we had everything we needed, and were so polite and discrete. We even had a private onsen outside our room, which we used after dinner. The next day we visited some more shrines, walked for a long while along the river bank, and tried to keep it to the smaller streets. I’m a coffee nerd so I couldn’t miss out on the Kyoto coffee scene, and can highly recommend Weekender’s coffee and Kurasu. Lovely spaces as well.

**TOKYO part 2**

Back on the Tokyo bound shinkanshen! This time we headed to Shibuya. Similar vibe to the previous days in Tokyo: leave hotel early, and just walk, walk walk. Have onigiri from konbini. And walk some more. We felt we got really lucky with the weather, even though it was cold and windy, it was sunny and pleasant. We did well to bring our winter coats tbh, which initially we were debating.

Notable from this second leg of our Tokyo stay:

* the crowds and how they seamlessly work together to stand around and walk over that crossing
* the incredible concentration and availability of high end fashion – not even in NYC can one find this. It blew our minds a bit.
* the fact that young people can afford these names? I routinely saw people in their 20s with Balenciaga shoes that cost thousands. It was kind of insane. Were they also tourists? We couldn’t really tell.
* even if people aren’t into big brands, they are so fashion aware, it was really cool to see
* we had the chance to meet up with a friend of a friend for our last night, who took us to an izakaya and a sake bar in Sangenjaya area, which were by far the highlights in terms of ambiance. Since she speaks Japanese she made sure I could eat stuff we ordered, which was really nice for me not worrying about allergies.

**LANGUAGE**

Be prepared to use your hands to communicate! It’s not a problem, and doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong. I have found myself in situations where I don’t speak the local language and the locals do NOT want to cooperate, and this is totally the opposite – everyone was super sweet while we were pointing to the food item/subway ticket/whatever, and we never felt rushed. The one exception was a super stressed out cashier/hostess at Kura Sushi who didn’t understand we had a reservation and sort of yelled at us to go back in line (we think?) which did feel unexpected and a bit patronizing but I’m sure the person just had a bad moment. It’s all good.

Do make an effort to learn some everyday phrases! You can find more info on the FAQ in the right side of this sub, this is what we relied on. I think it goes a long way in making you feel better and your presence feel less transactional to the locals (I am very sensitive to this).

We made heavy use of DeepL and Google Translate, particularly the camera feature of the latter.

**LOGISTICS**

**Money**
This combo worked flawlessly for us:

* WISE (ex Transferwise) debit card (VISA) with a WISE balance in Yen (best exchange rates, really easy to convert money from say a USD account to JPY). You can have multiple currencies under one WISE account, so I had converted some of my other currencies to JPY. This worked at 99% of places, I just couldn’t use it in Apple Wallet to load up my Suica card.
* Pretty much any place in Tokyo except smaller restaurants and shops take cards. There are also ATMs around (and inside convenience stores) to go grab some cash when in need.
* We withdrew cash once when we landed and didn’t need to do that again (we had to pay the ryokan in Kyoto in cash) – just relied on Wise debit card for the rest.

**Phone**

We each got UBIGI 3G plan for Japan (something like 8 USD?) which has lasted us exactly the amount of days we needed to use it (we mainly used it for Google maps, if you want to stream/watch stuff get more)

**Transport**
Overall, while using the subway is super easy (and the subway itself is the best subway I’ve ever used) its not very easy to understand how the different lines work with each other, where the zones are etc. We still aren’t sure how it works haha. That said, we did a combo of two things:

* Used SUICA cards for the first 3 days in Tokyo and were just topping them up as we needed to
* Used SUICA in Kyoto once
* Then when we got back from Kyoto and had another 3 days in Tokyo, we each got a 72h Tokyo tourist pass for 1500 JPY. I highly recommend it if you plan to be within the confines of the city (and are a tourist). There was a day we did 10+ trips with subway due to visiting architecture locations across the town, and this was perfect. It does NOT cover JR lines, and if you go further out you still need a ticket, but for Tokyo proper it was golden.
* We didn’t get a JR Pass since we only had one trip, we just went to Tokyo Station and got a two way ticket (it was easier to go talk to the person than use the machine).

**ALLERGY**

As I said above, I can’t have shrimp and I generally avoid shellfish when I’m away from home just to be safe. Even though we were super careful, there was one meal (in the dinner we were served at the ryokan in Kyoto) where I did find tiny shrimp in my salad

I had written that I’m allergic when reserving the room, and to get shellfish-free dinner, and we asked again the lady who was setting up the table for us, and she said it was fine. I guess something got lost in translation there (pun intended).

In hindsight, my mistake was that the cards I had printed didn’t explicity state “shrimp” as things I’m allergic to, but were saying “shellfish”. Which, in this case, was interpreted as seafood with a hard shell e.g. oysters etc. Its ok, nothing bad happened – I did freak out a bit and didn’t have much of the rest of the food that night though (my husband happily took one for the team there).

That said, I think there are DEFINITELY ways to avoid a scare like mine though, so here’s what you can do:

* Make sure allergy cards list ingredients/allergens explicitly, not just “shellfish”
* Also make sure you describe to them ways in which an allergen can be part of your food (in a broth or a dough, sometimes people assume you can’t have it as a main ingredient)
* Travel with a Japanese speaker 😅

In terms of places we ate that were fine:

* Ichiran (ramen, they don’t use any seafood in anything)
* Kura sushi (conveyor belt sushi, has allergen menu)
* Janjara (I think? Indian vegan between Shibuya and Omotesando, super good!)
* Torikizoku (yakitori, has allergen menu)
* Sushi Tokyo Ten – however I am NOT sure if someone with cross-contamination issues would be ok here, the chef wasn’t really so diligent about cleaning knives and washing hands between food items (we were watching him cut stuff in front of us).

**TLDR**: Avoiding shellfish is totally possible. Obviously you could go vegan, but even if you want to fish or meat like me, there are ways to do it UNLESS you are extremely allergic (cross-contamination will be harder to avoid).

**MUSINGS**

* OK, toilets. Cliche, but true. I still have to look up the history of them.
* Mom and pop shops and restaurants exist and are alive in this country, which is so refreshing. I really hope this never changes!
* There’s such a spectacular symbiosis of ultra-western capitalism (I hope I’m not lighting fires with this term) and this “other” Japan where the side streets are quiet, not everything is online, people run their family businesses, everyone still (apparently?) needs to photocopy and print stuff out (we saw all the machines at the konbinis), not to mention the politeness and just next level maneurisms.
* Japanese people use their hands with precision, and often use both hands to hold small things (e.g. the credit card being given to you back with both hands after you have paid). We found that fascinating.
* Its so clean – there’s absolutely no other city I would feel comfortable going to the subway station lmao
* I’m not entirely sure I understood which side of the street we are supposed to walk on at any given point 😅 In the subway its clearer with the signs, but street level not so much.
* This city offers such an intense auditive experience, both the excess and the absence of noise/music was really novel for us.
* A propos, what’s with the really annoying buzzing/high pitched noise outside malls and some automatic doors?

Oh man this is so long. It’s because this flight is also so long and I’m still awake. Thank you so much if you have made it thus far!

I am very grateful I had the opportunity to make this trip a reality for us. I am sure the image I have from Japan in my head right now is an idyllic one, and not everything is perfect, but this trip has been trully delightful. Typing all this has made me want to go right back.

Soon, hopefully! 🤞

Thank you Japan! Arigato gozaimasu!