12 days and 1 Medical Emergency – Theme Park Focused Trip Report (Tokyo, Fujikawaguchiko, Kuwana, Osaka)

Hello again all, and thanks again for all your tips in helping me and my wife navigate her medical emergency at the very beginning of our trip. She is doing great and we are back home now. After a couple days we were able to get back on our way, although we did have to cut out Kyoto. We will be back in 2025, so we’ll go then.

There are plenty of good tips on this sub and the travel tips sub, so I am going to mostly focus on our experience – in great detail. First I have an outline of the highlights of each day, then an outline of what we ate, and then a novel length trip report detailing each day, with rough time stamps. There are some theme park spoilers in here, so if there’s anything you don’t want to read details about, please skip those sections.

Day 0: Shinjuku, Yoshinoya, Golden Gai

Day 1: Kawaguchiko Hike, Fuji-Q Highland, Shibuya Disney Store and Pokemon Center, Shibuya Sky

Day 2: Meiji Jingu, Shinkansen, Nagashima Spa Land, Hospital

Day 3: Hospital, Nagashima Onsen

Day 4: Nagashima Spa Land, Hospital, Kuwana

Day 5: Goodbye Hospital! Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, HEP Five Ferris Wheel, Dotonbori River Cruise, Izakaya

Day 6: Universal Studios Japan

Day 7: Osaka Castle, Shinkansen, Toy Story Hotel, Ikspiari, Chef Mickey

Day 8: Tokyo DisneySea

Day 9: Tokyo Disneyland

Day 10: Yokohama Cosmo World, Gundam Factory Yokohama, Tokyo Joypolis, Teamlab Planets

Day 11: Kanda Myojin Shrine, Hichioji, Ghibli Museum, Sanrio Puroland, Yomiuri Land, Golden Gai

Day 12: Akihabara Shopping, Maid Café, Asahi Sky Room, Nakamise-dori Street, Senso-ji, Hanayashiki, Tokyo Dome City, Sushiro, Gigo, Don Quijote

I know we didn’t eat the best on this trip, but I was happy with most of the food we ate. We’ll plan a few more meals next time.

Day 0: Yoshinoya

Day 1: Convenience store snack breakfast, fried chicken at Fuji-Q, 7-Eleven Fried Chicken

Day 2: Convenience store snack breakfast, Ekiben, Hotel Nagashima Buffet

Day 3: No breakfast/lunch, Hotel Nagashima Buffet

Day 4: Hotel Nagashima Buffet breakfast, 7-Eleven chicken, Kushikatsu Tanaka

Day 5: Hotel Breakfast, forgot lunch, Izakaya in Namba (okonomiyaki, yakisoba, etc)

Day 6: Hotel Breakfast, Jurassic Park Discovery Café for lunch,

Day 7: Hotel Breakfast, Takoyaki and Karaage, Ekiben, Chef Mickey

Day 8: Lotso Garden Café, Snacks, Magellan’s

Day 9: Oceano (Hotel Mira Costa buffet), Popcorn, Mickey buns, Hungry Bear curry (twice)

Day 10: 7-Eleven Matcha Donuts (this was breakfast our last 4 days), Udon in Yokohama, McDonald’s

Day 11: Yoshinoya, FamiChiki, Ramen from Goron Ramen in Golden Gai

Day 12: Maidreamin’ Maid Café, 7-Eleven chicken, Sushiro

**Day 0:**

18 – Flight was delayed so we landed between 5 and 6 pm. Barely made it to the counter to pick up our Suica cards (got one of the last ones from a Klook package with our Fuji-Q tickets)

20 – Arrived at hotel in Shinjuku. Gazed in awe at all the lights as we approached our hotel which had Godzilla stalking it (Hotel Gracery Shinjuku). The room had a great view looking out towards Tokyo.

21 – Strolled around Shinjuku. Ate at Yoshinoya (recommended to us by our local Gyu Don place back home). Stumbled into a nice walking path that turned out to lead to Golden Gai. Walked around Golden Gai deciding that we didn’t want to pay a cover for one drink. Went to Art Bar, no cover and cool vibes. Did some karaoke and hung out for maybe 45 minutes before heading back to the hotel.

**Day 1:**

6: Bus to Fujikawaguchiko

8: Hiked up to **Kawaguchiko Tenjozan Park** enjoying majestic views of an unobscured Mt Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi. Took some photos at the top and took in the scenery for 15-20 minutes before opting to hike back down instead of taking the ropeway.

1015: Entered **Fuji-Q Highland**. If you want more details on the theme/amusement parks of this trip, please check out my trip report on r/rollercoasters! But some quick thoughts are: we had a great time here! Eejanaika lived up to the hype, and the other rides were all fun too. The new coaster Zykkon is a perfect new addition to this park, not as intense as the other big coasters, but really fun with a killer soundtrack. The only problem with this park, and it’s a big one, is that the operations are incredibly slow and you need to buy the way overpriced priority passes to enjoy it properly. This was a slow day and it was 2300 yen for each coaster. That price goes to 3000 on busy days.

1730: Boarded the bus back to Tokyo

1930: Crossed with the masses at Shibuya Scramble and made a pit stop at the Disney Store. Then went to Parco and glanced at the other shops on the way to the Pokemon Center. Some really fun and cute merch at the shop, plus a badass Mewtwo at the entrance. Bought a few things and headed out

2030: Shibuya Sky – Got sofa reservations which was well worth it. The views were of course stunning, and getting nearly an hour to just hang out with a couple drinks with my wife gazing at the twinkling city was wonderful. Afterwards we meandered around the rooftop until closing.

2230: Back to Shinjuku where we had some curry at Coco Ichibanya.

**Day 2:**

9: Bade farewell to the giant Godzilla head and checked out of the hotel. Unfortunately we didn’t have our JR Pass vouchers the night before when there was no line, so we had to wait a bit to pick them up. That meant cutting out some time on Takashita Street.

10: Packed stuff into a locker in Harajuku and went to our first shrine/temple, **Meiji Jingu**. Nice serene walk, a bit crowded but not too bad. The temple was beautiful and we did our best to follow others leads in paying our respect. Picked up a couple Omamori and headed back down to Takashita Street. We walked a few minutes down the street just checking it out. It’s a neat little street, clearly a bit of a tourist trap, but that doesn’t bother us. We weren’t too sad to not have more time here though.

12: Shinkansen to Nagoya and local transit to Hotel Nagashima. Had an ekiben on the journey and loved watching the scenery fly by on the bullet train. Checked in and headed into **Nagashima Spa Land**. This is where my wife began to experience the nausea and pain that would ultimately lead to her having emergency surgery to remove her problematic ovary. Thanks again to all who offered support for my post about that. I’d like to not focus on that too much in this write-up and go on about my experience aside from that. Please don’t judge me for having continued to have some fun while my wife was sick. She thought it was food poisoning and that it would pass, and she urged me to go ride the rides while she tried to get the nausea to pass.

15: So I rode most of the coasters at the park, stopping at coaster #599. The goal was to make Steel Dragon 2000 my 600th roller coaster, and I was saving it for the next day when hopefully the “food poisoning” had passed and my wife could join me for that milestone. Unfortunately, that did not end up being the case.

18: She tried to rest in the hotel room, while I went to the buffet, which was quite good, although I didn’t have much appetite at this point. I brought back some rice for her hoping that her stomach could take that. But it couldn’t. She had gotten worse and we informed the hotel we needed help. They had one of the employees drive us to the hospital. He stayed with us the whole time. The hotel really went above and beyond for us, which was amazing. After 5 or so hours she was discharged with pain and nausea medication.

We got back to the hotel and tried to sleep for a few hours before it became clear that the meds were not helping and we needed to go back to the hospital. I made my post while we were trying to sleep. A few people criticized me for posting on reddit looking for help, but I didn’t know where else to turn and she hadn’t yet decided that she needed to go back to the hospital.

**Day 3:**

5: We got back to the hospital where I waited most of the day in the lobby, not allowed to be at my wife’s side. They ran all the scans and found that her ovary was twisted again (this had happened twice in the past year and the second time she elected not to remove the ovary – hindsight is 20/20). The only course of action was to have it removed. Everything went well with the surgery and my wife in good humor about the whole thing loves to say she “literally left a piece of herself in Japan”.

19: I was technically supposed to leave by 5pm, but they let me stay with her a little later. The hotel sent someone to take me back, and I went back to the buffet. This night I was able to enjoy the onsen, **Yuami no Shima**, which did help relieve some of this stress. Of course I felt terrible my wife couldn’t get this experience too, but I did my best to enjoy it. The onsen at Nagashima is really beautiful with many waterfalls and bonsai trees filling in the space between the pools. The signs said it was the highest class hot spring, which I’m not really sure what that means, but sounds good. It was definitely a little uncomfortable at first, but I got used to it well enough and was glad to have gotten this experience.

**Day 4:**

8: I talked to my wife in the morning and she was doing really well besides being starving since they wouldn’t let her eat yet. She wasn’t in any pain and everything seemed to be best case scenario. Again she urged me to make the most of this and go back to the park for a couple hours and to pick her up some stretchy pants from the Jazz Dream outlet mall at the resort before heading back to the hospital.

So I went back to **Nagashima Spa Land** and went straight for Steel Dragon 2000, a coaster I first dreamt of riding over 20 years ago when it first opened months after Millenium Force at Cedar Point snatching the records for tallest, fastest, and longest coaster, the latter of which it still holds to this day. As the coaster slowly climbed the lift hill, I looked over the empty seat next to me straight in the direction of the hospital, which I could just make out as it was the tallest building in the area. I started to absolutely lose it bawling my eyes out and just wishing for nothing more than my wife to be sitting next to me. The people around me probably thought I was terrified of the ride lol – if only they knew. The ride was as good as I hoped, but also one of the most bizarre experiences of my life – a literal emotional roller coaster. On the first drop I started to laugh, unable to resist the joy I feel when plummeting over 300 feet at speeds exceeding 90 mph. Then as the coaster slowed, climbing and cresting the first large camelback hill, the laugher shifted back to intense sadness and crying, longing for my wife to be able to experience this with me. I’m sitting there floating out of my seat crying like a baby – it was so weird. This repeated throughout the ride. Laugh cry laugh cry. By the end I had ridden my 600th coaster and immediately called my wife needing to hear her voice. She was still doing well and was happy I went through with it. I stayed at the park a couple more hours before picking up some pants from Gap (stretchy yoga type pants are nearly impossible to find in Japan apparently), grabbed some chicken from 7-Eleven, and got my last ride to the hospital from the hotel.

14: I stayed with my wife just chatting until around 7pm when again I had to leave. I appreciate that the hospital let me stay later. They were very understanding to our situation. They finally let her “eat” something which was a liquid meal consisting of rice porridge, which she proclaimed was the worst thing she had ever eaten. I got her some peach jelly from the hospital mini mart which was the only part of the meal she enjoyed.

20: I checked into a hotel in nearby **Kuwana** and went to find something to eat in the nearby yokocho alley. I stumbled into a kushikatsu chain called **Kushikatsu Tanaka** that was the most packed place on the street. Looked good to me. Locals have likely heard of it since they are apparently everywhere, but to anyone who is visiting, I highly recommend finding one near you. I was overwhelmed by the menu at first and ordered a beer, 5 kushikatsu, and some yakitori. I realized quickly this was too much and the best way to do this is to order a couple things at a time and play the Chinchirorin dice game for discount highballs/cocktails. You get a bowl and 2 dice, and roll. Snake eyes gets a free double pour, doubles gets a free drink, evens get half off, and odds gets a double price double portion. So the worst case is you pay double for double. Not bad. My luck was good I only rolled doubles and evens. I have to admit I got pretty tipsy at this place, but it was fun and helped get my mind off things. I had the beer, 2 lemon highballs, a Tanaka sour (not sure what this even was but it was great), an Oolong Hai, and a little fish full of tequila in about 90 minutes, along with I don’t even know how many kushikatsu skewers. The bill ended up being like $25 which is absurd by US standards. I used Google translate to tell the waiter my situation and thank him for helping me get my mind off things. He was moved and asked me for a photo, which I gladly took with him. I then went back to the hotel and called my wife to chat before bed. She was still doing better and better and hopeful they would let her leave the next day.

**Day 5:**

9: I packed up in the morning and started heading to the hospital. I apparently left my phone charger, but oh well. I had a backup and a battery pack. On the train over the good news came – my wife would be discharged shortly! I got to the hospital and we hung out waiting to be let go, and we got out around noon.

12: We got a taxi to the train station, and with me carrying all of our luggage we headed to Nagoya to catch the shinkansen to Osaka. Sadly this ordeal led to missing Kyoto entirely, but we are already planning to come back in 2025, so we’ll just go then.

14: We checked into the hotel and my wife relaxed and took a shower before deciding she felt good enough to do some sightseeing with our Osaka Amazing Pass. I rearranged things a bit to where we would never have to walk more than 5-10 minutes at a time, and we took it nice and slow at whatever pace she needed, stopping to sit whenever necessary.

16: **Museum of Housing and Living** – we didn’t have long here, but what a cool museum! Walking through the Edo period streets looking at the little shops and houses as the time of day shifted from day to night was so nice. The other floor of the museum with little models of late 19th/early 20th century Osaka was also neat to see.

18: **HEP Five Ferris Wheel**. Waited around 20 minutes. It was just after dusk and the city was beautiful with the last bit of sunlight fading away and the city transitioning to a sparkling sea of lights.

20: **Wonder Cruise on the Dotonbori**. We walked through Namba, again being amazed that places like this exist in the world. My wife was delighted when she found out we would be taking a boat ride through this river lined with bright lights and flashy shops and restaurants. The boat ride was nice, with music clearly aimed at tourists. All Star by Smash Mouth came on and we sang along, belting probably a little too loudly since no one else on the boat was singing haha. We then walked up the river taking it in more while we waited for my wife’s friend and his wife to meet up with us.

21: We all went to an **Izakaya in Namba** (I don’t remember the name) and ate a bunch of different things, but most importantly Okonomiyaki. All the food was great, and it was nice to sit and chat with another couple, and especially nice that they spoke Japanese and took care of all the ordering for us. We had to head out earlier than we would have liked to since we still planned to go to Universal the next day.

**Day 6:**

From here on out the trip went mostly as planned. Again please don’t judge my wife’s decisions to ride rides a few days after surgery. She didn’t ride anything too intense or anything she didn’t feel comfortable with. She knows her body. I pushed her around in a wheelchair all day so she wouldn’t have to walk too much.

9-22: **Universal Studios Japan** \- We got Premier Express for this day, which made all the difference as the park was intensely crowded. I think this park is easily the best Universal Studios park, and it rivals Islands of Adventure for best Universal park in general, although I haven’t been to Beijing or Singapore yet so I can’t compare those.

More details in the comments.

2230: Laundry. This wasn’t the best time to do laundry, but we lost the time in Kyoto that was planned for it, and it needed to be done.

**Day 7:**

10: **Osaka Castle Park** – We were walking distance, but we took a train to get a little closer. We had a pleasant walk up to the castle, enjoying views of the castle walls on the way in. We bought a little volcanic rock flower pot to put a little plant in back home. We also stopped at the Hokoku shrine near the castle.

We saw signs for a figure museum, which is something that really appeals to us, so we checked that out when we got up to the castle. We spent maybe 45 minutes looking at all the figures, and thought it was well worth the time. Got a couple toys from the capsule machines at the end. Had lunch in that building by the castle – overpriced karaage and takoyaki. The takoyaki was good, and I liked that you could add your own toppings, but it was definitely not as good as if we had gotten it off the street. Also takoyaki is so hot, I don’t know how you’re supposed to properly enjoy it lol.
We finished walking around the castle, admiring its beauty and then headed back to the hotel to make our way to the shinkansen.

14: Shinkansen back to Tokyo and local transit to Tokyo Disney Resort.

17: Checked into **Toy Story Hotel** and relaxed for a minute. This hotel is so cute and well themed. There are giant versions of all the main characters split between a park out front, and a courtyard inside the hotel. There are so many fun little details to find. The rooms are equally adorable, my favorite part being the TV being a giant Etch-A-Sketch. Unfortunately, you can only see any of this if you are staying there as they have security at the front that won’t let you in otherwise. The other hotels are not like this.

18: Walked around Ikspiari, Tokyo’s version of Downtown Disney/Disney Springs. It was nice to walk around, but we didn’t feel like we needed more time there. They had a Disney Store, but it was really just a mall. Learned that there is a production of the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast, which I wish we had known about because it is one of my wife’s favorite Broadway shows. If it’s still there next time, maybe we’ll be able to see it.

19: Dinner at **Chef Mickey** at the Ambassador Hotel. This was expensive but was a nice meal. The food was all quite good, and we had a really fun interaction with Chef Mickey himself. Unfortunately the other characters would not be returning to greeting for a couple more weeks.

21: Went back to the hotel and watched some Japanese TV on our Etch-A-Sketch before bed.

**Day 8:**

6: Breakfast at **Lotso Garden Café**. The restaurant was themed to Lotso Huggins from Toy Story 3. It was cute, but not as highly themed as the rest of the hotel. The food was good, and there was a lot of it. Good way to fuel up before a long day.

8: Check-in at Hotel Mira Costa. My goodness this hotel is nice. We didn’t have our room yet, but it’s gorgeous inside and out. And the fact that it’s also part of the entry area to Tokyo DisneySea is just \*chef’s kiss\*.

9-21: **Tokyo DisneySea** – I have been looking forward to this park for so long. My wife and I are both big Disney Parks fans and were so excited to see a completely unique Disney theme park that isn’t hindered by budget like the Disney-owned parks. We both went into this park almost completely blind. I knew a lot of the rides, but not details about them, and had no idea what to expect as far as the lands within the park. Any expectations I had were exceeded tenfold. This park is everything you could possibly want in a Disney Park. It has Disney IP, but not jammed down your throat. It has unique rides, different versions of familiar rides, incredibly detailed theming in every corner. No layout issues, great in-park transportation options.

We had a vacation package which let us book 3 premier access passes ahead of time, so we used those on Journey to the Center of the Earth, Tower of Terror, and Soaring Fantastic Flight (feels weird to type the g in “Soaring”). We were able to ride almost everything, skipping a few kiddie rides, and unfortunately missing the Finding Nemo ride. We did utilize their 40th anniversary priority pass, which allowed us to get rides with little to no wait on Indiana Jones and Raging Spirits. I was bummed to find that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was closed. Next time.

We ate dinner at Magellan’s, which was a beautiful restaurant, and the food was excellent. But it did take longer than we would have liked. Was hoping for an hour and it was more like 90 minutes. We were anxious to leave by the end. We also went to the Teddy Roosevelt Bar, which was a cool vibe and one of the best themed bars I’ve been to.

Highlights are in the comments as I needed to trim this down.

21: We finally got to see our room, and wow! Incredibly nice. Best Disney resort I’ve stayed in, and I’ve stayed at most of them in the US. It actually blows away any of them in the US, even Animal Kingdom Lodge (my favorite) and Grand Floridian (the nicest) if we’re just talking the room itself.

**Day 9:**

**Tokyo Disneyland**

This might sound stupid, but one of the main reasons we chose to do this trip this year was because Tokyo is revamping their Tomorrowland and replacing Space Mountain with a modernized version. We wanted to see/ride the original before that takes place. So we were excited for this park, but after DisneySea, Tokyo Disneyland didn’t really have a chance. I would say this park compares closest to Magic Kingdom in Orlando, is better than Disneyland Paris, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s better than the OG Disneyland. Haven’t been to Shanghai/Hong Kong yet to compare.

The park is as well designed as you expect from a Disney castle park, although it does lack shade in a lot of queues. We utilized our vacation package priority access as well as the 40th anniversary priority passes to minimize queues. The longest we waited for anything was about 20 minutes. The park is definitely similar to the other castle parks, but I would still not skip this if you are a Disney Parks fan. Most of the rides that are the same are different enough to be worth checking out, and there are a few unique rides that make this a must visit. Those unique rides were the highlights, which are in a comment since I needed to trim this down.

**Day 10:**

Okay, onward from the detailed Disney reports. Our last 4 nights we stayed at the Nohga Hotel Akihabara, which had the comfiest beds and the darkest room of the trip.

10: **Yokohama Cosmo World** – It was a gusty day, which sadly meant all 3 coasters were nonoperational. Maybe we’ll come back out here one day, but it’s a bit of trek out from central Tokyo. We did end up riding 3 very fun dark rides, on which we won a few little prizes, and the giant ferris wheel. We ate Udon at the food court at the mall next door.

14: **Gundam Factory Yokohama** – We were told at the gate that due to wind the gundam might not operate, but fortunately he did. This was so cool to see in person. The Gundam is full scale and fully articulated. We only stayed long enough to watch one of the two shows where he moves to some dialogue along with score and sound effects. It moves pretty slowly, but is so impressive nonetheless. The museum inside has some fun exhibits that explain the engineering process. I chatted with a couple guys who I believe were on the team that built it and you can see the love they have for this project. I hope they find something to do with it after its time in Yokohama is over.

16: **Tokyo Joypolis** \- We took the train up to Odaiba and walked by the Unicorn Gundam statue and the scaled down Statue of Liberty, enjoying the views of the city and the Rainbow Bridge. We arrived at Joypolis with about 2 and a half hours to spend there. This was not enough, but we still got our money’s worth, especially considering this was on our Klook pass. First we stopped at the Gekion Live Coaster – this was more fun than expected. I didn’t realize it was like a rhythm game dark ride, followed by a slightly longer than expected coaster layout. I did the Sonic Athletics thing because it was loading as we walked by – my wife sat out because it was too strenuous looking. That was fun, I came in 2nd, almost coming back and beating the kids I was up against lol. The Attack on Titan and Sadako walkthrough experiences were so cool despite being in Japanese. Sadako was in the top 3 scariest experiences of the trip. We did a little flight simulator that was a good time, and then another standout attraction in the horror theater, a 3d movie/moving theater kind of attraction with some practical effects mixed in. It was a nice surprise. I missed out on the neat looking halfpipe ride because they shut the attractions early, as is typical at Japanese parks. Overall Joypolis was kind of what I wish DisneyQuest in Orlando had become.

19: We had our one Japanese **McDonald’s** visit of the trip, and it was about as good as McDonald’s can be. I had a Samurai Mac and a Shaka Shaka Chicken and my wife had a Teriyaki McBurger and McNuggets

20: **Teamlab Planets** – Yes it does smell like feet in some spots, but this was an otherworldly experience. We love art exhibits like this (big Meow Wolf fans) and this didn’t disappoint. There are really only 5 or 6 experiences in here, but we spent a lot of time at each of them. Our favorite was probably the infinite falling flowers or whatever it was called. We took around an hour and a half to go through the whole thing and didn’t feel like we rushed at all (besides the one where your time is limited).

22: Stopped into Don Quijote on the way back to the hotel.

**Day 11:**

Head back to Akihabara, do whatever is open

9: Our hotel was near the Kanda Myojin temple so we went and checked that out. Nice temple that had an Omamori vending machine so we were able to pick one up.

10: Headed to **Hichioji** to explore a little. Went into Yodobashi Camera and got an accessory for my GoPro and replaced my charger that I lost. Had a quick lunch at Yoshinoya and had the cheese gyudon.

12: **Ghibli Museum** – After walking through the park, it was easy to see why they chose this location. Maybe this wasn’t the reason, but it just felt like walking into a Ghibli movie before we even got there. The museum itself was a joy. The short movie was adorable and our favorite exhibit was on the first floor where they explain how animation works. The museum was so whimsical inside and out and was just fun to explore. We spent about an hour and a half there and didn’t feel like we rushed. Everything was in Japanese and you couldn’t use your phone to translate, so I did feel that I missed out a little there.

15: **Sanrio Puroland** – Added this with our Klook pass because I figured we wouldn’t ever want to spend full price here. We aren’t really Hello Kitty fans, but we do like cute things, so we enjoyed this a lot. The park is super well themed inside, very detailed with a big central hub with a giant tree, and several spokes, most of which ended in a theater that hosted some presumable very cute shows. We didn’t have time for the shows and didn’t really care if we missed them. It was the Halloween celebration, so there were extra decorations everywhere. We paid to skip the lines for the boat ride and the dark ride. The boat ride was adorable and long, full of animatronics and unique views of the central hub of the park. The wait was an hour which we would have never done, but 2000 yen to skip the line was worth it, especially since our admission was nearly free. The My Melody dark ride was also cute, and to be fair cost half as much to skip the line, but it was mostly moving cutouts with some inanimate characters at the end, so it was pretty skippable and lame compared to the other ride. The name of the ride is also awful: My Melody MyMeRoad Drive. I’m still not entirely sure what this name is supposed to be. Some attempt at an English portmanteau feature My Melody Memory Road Drive or something I guess. Overall we loved the little we got of this place, and didn’t mind that we didn’t get to meet any of the characters or walk through Hello Kitty’s house. Maybe we’ll go back one day if we have kids.

17: **Yomiuriland** – We had originally slotted this in earlier in the trip, but I am so glad we went at night during their Jewelluminations event that had just started this weekend. We took the gondola up to the park as the sun was setting and got our first glimpse of the gorgeous light display that covers every inch of the park from October to April. This made the park truly breathtaking and any lines we waited in felt short because you could just look at all the lights. Even if you don’t like theme parks, this place is worth checking out for the light display alone. You can buy admission only for like 1200 yen. We got one ride on each of the four coasters, plus the ferris wheel, and a couple other smaller rides. We paid to skip the rather long lines on the two indoor coasters so we could enjoy the scenery more. I believe this is a Christmas light display that has been expanded to 6 months due to popularity. It’s one of the most, if not the most, impressive light displays I’ve ever seen. The color palette is wonderful, designed by renowned lighting designer Motoko Ishii.

22: **Ramen Garon** \- We were hungry and decided to swing back through Shinjuku and **Golden Gai** for some ramen.

**Day 12:**

So we have arrived at our last day in Japan. The original plan was to go out to Tobu Zoo to ride a couple great looking coasters and see the animals, but I decided the coasters were too intense for my wife to try this trip, and our time would be better spent checking out Akihabara – since, you know, we were staying there…

10: Went shopping a bit. Popped into Animate and bought an issue each of One Punch Man and Attack on Titan. Volks Akihabara Hobby Paradise – looked around at all the figures on display. Bic Camera – got a USB-C cable.

12: **Maidreamin** (Maid Café) – This was not on the agenda at all, but I figured why not check one of these out. We had so much fun! Everything was super cute and tasty. We had a little teddy bear hamburger, a rice omelette, a panda sundae, and a couple drinks. It was pricey, but you’re paying for the experience and with the strength of the USD it wasn’t that bad.

13: Didn’t really find anything at Kotobukiya, but we also went into Mandarake which was super cramped but had some cool old retro stuff. Picked up a future Trunks from DBZ that was at a reasonable price.

15: **Asahi Sky Room** – The beer was good and the view was great – if you could get a good seat, which we did not. We waited around 20 minutes and never got a good seat. This was one of the bigger misses of the trip, but it was still cool.

16: **Nakamise-dori Street and Senso-ji** – Mostly tacky touristy souvenirs, but who cares? This place was a lot of fun to walk through and we bought a bunch of cheap tacky last minute souvenirs. Actually loved walking through here. The temple was obviously beautiful and we spent a good bit of time walking around appreciating it all. We did our best to do the rinsing and incense rituatls, paid our respects at the shrine, and got a couple more omamori and tried our luck picking out an omikuji. It was mostly good fortune.

17: **Hanayashiki** – The oldest amusement park in Japan with the oldest Togo roller coaster. This was a tiny but nice little park right next to Senso-ji. We rode the coaster and the dark horror ride and just walked around the park a bit. Price per ride was not great since we didn’t have any time, but there wasn’t anything else we would have cared to ride even with more time.

19: **Tokyo Dome City** Attractions – After much confusion we finally redeemed our ticket books and had a couple hours to spend here. Back Daan was a unique little coaster, and Thunder Dolphin was a great ride with an even better name. The ops were terribly slow, so one ride would be all we got, but it was a little too intense for my wife anyway. We did the walkthrough horror attraction, which was terrifying by any standard. Much more than we were expecting. Then we had 2 tickets left each and little time, so we rode the ferris wheel twice taking in views of nighttime Tokyo one last time. Our first ride was on a karaoke car, which we had a blast doing. What a uniquely Japanese experience riding a ferris wheel while singing karaoke. We made our way to the train for our last little bit of our trip.

2130: **Sushiro**\- I know this is a chain and not exactly fine dining, but my wife had yet to have sushi on this trip after only recently learning that she was not allergic to fish, after thinking she was her whole life. She had just a few pieces as she was still filling fast because of the surgery, but I ran the bill up. I don’t even know how many pieces I got, but it was a lot, and even then it was like $25 for a crazy amount of sushi that was, by US standards, still really really good.

2230: Ran into a **Gigo** since we hadn’t done much arcading. Finally got to try a Taiko No Tatsujin machine which was a blast. We did one round together and one round just me. I might pick up the Switch version to practice for our next trip. Then put a few hundred yen in trying to win a Mr Toad, and since they were closing the employee opened the machine and pushed him up to the edge so I could win him in one more try. So nice of him. I think I would have had it in a few more tries, but might have given up not wanting to make more change. We then ran into the **Game Panic** across the street where my wife won a little Kuromi in one try for 100 yen.

2330: **Don Quijote** – The one in Akihabara has an arcade on the top floor, and I wouldn’t feel right leaving Japan without some DDR, so I played one round. So all in all I spent 1200 yen for 2 rounds of Taiko, a round of DDR, and 2 little plushes from UFO machines. We then did our last minute shopping and headed back to the room, sad that our trip was over.

And there you have it, our experience in Japan. If you read this far, thanks for reading my trip journal. Happy to answer any questions!