This is my trip report from Japan, we arrived back yesterday and I was exhausted to the point we could barely function. Overall my trip went about as expected (I will explain). Dates were 3.9 – 3.18
The one thing I didn’t know was actually about customs. My flight was routed to my home city via LAX and the customs process was something I didn’t expect. I always flew to my home city and didn’t know about the “first contact with land” rule. Fortunately, it was generally painless and kind of convenient on some level to not have to clear customs in my home city, where customs is notoriously slow.
The plan was “9” days in Japan – Leaving Thursday the 9th and departing on the 18th. I am generally not a planner, so you won’t see an itinerary anywhere on here from me. I prefer to choose one or two things that I really want to see a day and then let the rest happen as it happens. It worked out about as I had hoped. Tokyo 10-11, Tokyo>Kyoto 12 (half day Tokyo travel > Kyoto), Kyoto 13 > 16, Kyoto>Tokyo 17, Depart the 18th.
Part of my pre-plan was that I was travelling with my teen (14), and I knew that \[teen\] was not really going to be as driven as I was to “go hard” when they travel. I am FOMO driven and the idea of not seeing all the things has notoriously driven me to go for 20 hour days, and I knew that I couldn’t fight about it and have a good time. I didn’t want to ruin his vacation by being too aggressive and didn’t want to ruin my vacation arguing with my teen trying to get him to do what I wanted. So we went soft instead, with a few “hard things” that were must dos and as long as they got done I let everything else be as is.
Day 1 landing in Toyko –
JAL is the only way to fly – JAL is a codeshare partner with AA, and so we got booked on JAL on the way out and AA on the way back, and it was just a coach ticket. Overall, the experience on JAL even in coach is significantly superior to AA. I won’t ever fly to Japan on any other airline again.
We were staying in Akihabara (ironically, I picked a hotel that was on [hotels.com](https://hotels.com), I wasn’t shooting for a particular area of Tokyo) – I learned later that it was the “anime” area of town. Personally, it felt a little more like Vegas to me. We went for a walk in the evening to grab some food and were presented with the street of girls pitching maid cafes. Grabbed some snacks for dinner and dropped out.
I woke up super early and the hotel we stayed at was very nice (Hotel Nogha), and … teen … which you will see is a common occurrence. So I went for a short walk on my own and enjoyed the streets. And this was another lesson:
Nobody wakes up before 8 apparently. I was up at 6-7 every day at least and every morning there was NO ONE out and about everywhere I went. You can’t really do much store wise, but if you want to enjoy the quiet time away from from people, do get up a little earlier. I went for a walk in Kyoto (we stayed outside of Gion area and I went for a nice walk and saw a really pretty bridge – like way too nice for normal. Of course, I didn’t know better and learned later that it was the Gion Tatsumi Bridge, the whole area was dead quiet and I saw maybe two people over an hour.)
Anyway… Tokyo – we got up early that morning and hopped a train to Senso-Ji. Super super impressive, I had read about the goshuin a week or so before I left, so this was on the mission list. Kid loved the idea, and was super into it.
We did the Team Labs thing, and it was exceptional. It’s been said a thousand times on here, and I recommend it as well. We also took the train and went to Meiji Jingu which was quite nice, there were what I assume were a couple of weddings. We grabbed some sakura coffee from Starubucks and it was exceptional.
\*Now, the only thing that I was surprised by was that we got some really nasty looks on the train. I expected that being a tourist is like being a tourist everywhere (you are tolerated and kinda suck, but people know that they live in places that want to be seen). But I had three people that no joke like stared hard at me to the point (two of them were staring and talking clearly about us), I have no tats, and was wearing a tshirt from my local martial arts school, so nothing offensive. I was really surprised by it, like it was above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Not sure if it was just because I was the “fat American tourist” or what. I presume it was something we did, but I for the life of me can’t figure out what other than “looking like a tourist”.
Day Two in Tokyo was visits and hanging around before the train to Kyoto. We were going to the Gotokuji temple, and stopped by the Setagaya Hachimangu shrine, since we walked from the station. And overall this was one of my favorite things about Japan overall, we would be going to get to one place, and end up somewhere totally cool along the way (the goshuin from Setagaya was SUPER cool and one of the few that they hand wrote for me). From there it was a dash back to Kappabashi to try and grab a knife as a gift. The shop we wanted was open, but the person we needed wasn’t there on Sunday, so we left (we came back later in the trip).
And again, accidents… kid was hungry so I looked for shops and there was my dream … okonomiyaki (I grew up on Ranma \*shrug\*) at a place called Sometaro and HOLY SMOKES it was amazing. One of my favorite meals and moments in Japan.
The Shinkansen was the shinkansen, it was everything they say it is, and was an evening ride after a long day, I’m surprised I didn’t fall asleep honestly.
Kyoto my kid was already bushed, so I took the morning walk (see bridge note above). I sorta just … kept walking, I ended up walking from the Shogoin Sannocho to the Marutamachi Station – I took the train out as far as I could to see the Nintendo office and get my logo photo. Others have said that it was not worth it, and worth is subjective. For me, it was worth it, but I totally see why going to see a square office building for the sake of the logo on the building… makes sense to me.
I made it back we had some lunch and kicked over to Fushimi Inari (my #1 must do for the trip) – we got there late, near sunset and it was beautiful. We stopped at the best ramen shop of the trip Ramen no Bombo – This was unequivocally the ramen I was hoping to try in Japan.
Tuesday the 14th was sumo and I – despite my best planning – underestimated my shoes. My feet were DYING. So we took our time getting to the station and saw the Sumo in Osaka. Minimal walking, sumo was a BLAST and would absolutely recommend. Yakitori in Osaka and hopped the train home, easy day, pretty chill and was still a good time.
Originally I left the 15th open, I was told that the fertility festival was on the 15th and who doesn’t want to see the penis festival? I decided that I should give my kid the option and he spun me for something not on the plan, a day trip to Hiroshima. And it was the best part of the trip. The museum is powerful. Now keep in mind this was not on the list of “to do” items I had planned for. Because of that I wasn’t ready for the story of Sadako Sasaki and I legit went to the end of the hall and cried from the story, it was heartbreaking.
We were hungry and based on other recommendations here we went to Okonomimura and ate what was apparently our weight in Okonomiyaki, they weren’t kidding about it being a big meal.
We had a few hours to kill and went to Hiroshima castle and it was a nice time. The inside wasn’t super impressive (though as an OG Nintendo kid, I never thought I’d see a Masamune blade). Nice museum overall, but after the museums I’ve seen elsewhere it wasn’t amazing. 3 bucks though, so \*shrug\* I’d pay for the view again. Back to the train and back to the hotel.
The last day in Kyoto my kid is done, like done done. So my FOMO drove me and I took an early ride back to Fushimi Inari one more time to do my own thing and let my kid sleep it off. The goshuin were the prize and the hike was nice to do alone without someone complaining. And it was worth it, the hike was great, and I got to go much much further in to the hike than we did last time.
The evening was shopping at Shinkyogoku where we spent a bit of time, had some ramen, coffee, and crepes. Got lots of gifts while we were here, and all the kit cats we could stand 😀
Next day was back to Tokyo to base off for departure Saturday – Highlight of the day was being able to meet Dave Bull at Ukioye Heroes shop, and it was fun, I got two of the 8 cats and he said the 4th in the series is in work now! We made it back to Kamata for our knife as well. In the end we watched Harry Potter in Japanese on TV in the hotel.
Saturday was the long road back.
Lessons of the trip:
1. Go hard or don’t. I don’t know how to feel about this in retrospect, it took me a long time to get there and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ve heard some great stories people have told and I am glad I got to share my first experience in Japan with my teen for their first international trip ever. I would have gone harder alone if I was solo, but I am not terribly sad.
2. This one may be controversial, but I wish that I knew more Japanese. By the end, I was tired and frustrated trying to translate, and that’s with a huge compliment to the locals who were better with English than I was with Japanese. I had a few really strange experiences (people staring) one embarrassing one where I forgot the word for toilet and they laughed at me, and one very cute and pleasant one where we were walking and two girls were doing photos and said “eeerrruu!” and I asked them “eerru?” because I thought that was the V sign, then realized they meant “ears” and I go “Ohh, ears!” and did rabbit ears and they nodded and laughed. It was super funny.
3. I’m a temple whore, and totally would have done 50 more if I could, I skipped on Kinkaku-ji, but by then I couldn’t do it anymore. The busses and trains and general thrall was exhausting. Out of any regrets, that would be my one big one.
4. Wifi was great and made life easier in all aspects.
I skipped some stuff for this report, but I really enjoyed the experience.