Just got back from Tokyo with my 14 month old. Reading trip reports before going was extremely helpful, so thought I would pay it forward by sharing a bit.
Lodging: We stayed in Ueno at the Mimaru Tokyo Ueno North and it was a perfect location for families. Very clean apartment style hotel, with cribs/bed rails for little ones. Location was perfect, quiet but 10 mins from Ueno park and Ueno station which is so alive with food and shops.
Travel around Tokyo: We used our travel stroller 95% of the trip, and our Ergo Baby the other 5%. We took the metro everywhere with our stroller and it was fine. We found elevators at every station we used, although some may be tricky to find, they are there. There are also special cars on the train that have areas for strollers. We would try to only ride in that car. If we took the train really early (during rush hour), we used the carrier and carried our closed travel stroller. This worked fine. We tried our best to keep our toddler quiet on the metro, but if he did fuss, no one seemed to care. In fact, sometimes people would wave hi to him/ try to make him happy.
Food: We ate GREAT! I was a bit nervous about this but we did not have any issues with any restaurants. We ate at everywhere that we wanted to. We did not go to any family restaurants… We went to the places we really wanted to go to, many of which were popular restaurants. We just planned ahead. We would go very early before the rush. And whenever we got to a restaurant, I would simply close the travel stroller, and ask to tuck it away somewhere. Most places are cramped, so they will appreciate you doing this. 9/10 we took turns holding our toddler while we ate. But, we were always welcomed everywhere we went.
We kept our itinerary pretty light. We would focus on one or two neighborhoods a day and spend time walking around exploring the attractions there. By the end of our trip (8 full days in Tokyo) we had seen and done A LOT. We had no issues at all finding clean changing tables. They are everywhere, Tokyo baby changing rooms blew me away with how clean they were.
Overall, we had a great trip. We kept our expectations low and went with the flow. All of our days started early and ended early. But would we do it all again? …absolutely yes!
We did a lot of the major attractions…but these are the places our toddler seemed to really enjoy.
Unko Museum
Ueno Zoo
Aqua park Shinagawa
Shibuya Sky
And literally anywhere else he could walk/run freely for a bit!
Hope this helps!
6 comments
Thank you for this! We are currently still on our trip with our 13 mo. I agree with a lot that you’re writing. Japan is super child friendly!
I have to say the stations are driving me mad sometimes! It’s sometimes very hard to find elevators, although most of the time they are there.
Our little one doesn’t walk yet, so that makes releasing energy a little harder since I don’t want to let him crawl on the ground everywhere.
We’re in Kyoto now and navigating around here is such a breeze compared to Tokyo!
Thanks for sharing!
Would you mind sharing your daily itinerary? Or do you have your list of restaurants you planned for ahead? Ill be going with my two year old early next year and we are also staying near Ueno.
How were naps? Any tips?
I think for readers, stating the brand and model of the travel stroller would be helpful.
For me, the GB Pockit+ and a strap attached to it to carry it when its folded was useful when my kid was < 3yo.
Yoyo zen worked great for our five month old in Japan. It folds up! We got the bag pack(add on) and it worked great. We checked this as a bag on the plane.
We also got him his own seat and used the doona for the airplane.
We only used taxis to and from the airport! Otherwise we walked and used the metro/trains.
Curious to know which restaurants you went to? I’ll be going with my 2 year old end of December.
a japanese boy was in a city in new york city when he met a sex worker. she said, ” i want you to kiss me and i’ll come all over! ” so the boy kissed her and she came. the next week, the boy went fishing and picked up the japanese girl from the fishing boat. he asked her, ” how many are you in here tonight? ” she replied, ” ten! “