Chad and I spent the last week exploring Tokyo! For those of you who
don't know, we live on Okinawa, which is just a small island of Japan.
In order to get to mainland Japan where all the big cities are, we have
to take a short 2 and half hour plane ride. Fortunately, there are
several small airlines that offer affordable flights from Okinawa to
Tokyo. We choose to go with Vanilla Air and have no complaints.
Once landing in Tokyo
on Sunday,
we had to find our way to our hotel. I had done some research
beforehand and decided that the best option for us was to take the
Keisei Skyliner. Purchasing tickets and finding our way to the Skyliner
was fairly simple. The Skyliner is a fancy subway train, it went pretty
fast and only made a couple stops. It took us to Ueno station and from
there, we needed to find our way to Hibiya station. While on the
Skyliner, we briefly talked with some other Americans who were staying
in the same hotel as us. They had been to Tokyo before so they knew what
they were doing. They told us about this subway/train card called
Pasmo. You preload this card with money and then when you're using the
subway and train system, you just scan your card and it deducts the
correct fare. Without the card, you have to buy tickets at every station
and figure out the fare yourself. Buying this card as soon as we got
there was one of the best decisions of our trip! It made figuring out
the subway system so much easier! I highly recommend it to anyone taking
a trip to Tokyo who will be using the subway system to get around. Not
only did they tell us about this card, they also let us follow them to
the hotel. Chad and I both agreed that if we didn't have them to follow,
we would have been lost. It would have taken us a long time to figure
out what train line to get in and then to find the correct train. Those
subway stations can be confusing! So after about an hour and 30 minute
trip from the airport to Hibiya station, we had a short walk to our
hotel, The New Sanno.
The New Sanno is a hotel strictly for military use only. If you're in
the military or retired, you need to take advantage of this hotel in the
center of Tokyo. I can't say enough good things about it. It was one of
the nicest hotels that I've ever stayed in and the cost was so
affordable. Since it's such a nice place, it's super popular so you need
to book way in advance especially if you want to stay on the weekends.
After checking in at our hotel and relaxing for a bit, we decided to
check out what was around the hotel. We walked up the street to a 7-11. I
was so excited to see 7-11 because I love slurpees! They don't sell
slurpees in Okinawa so I thought I'd be getting my slurpee fix very
soon! Unfortunately, I was let down because Japan's 7-11 don't carry
slurpees, what?! We went in every 7-11 we saw while we were in Tokyo and
never found one. I was pretty disappointed about that. After
discovering about the lack of slurpees, we decided to eat dinner at
McDonalds since it was fast and easy. Japanese McDonalds are not like
those in the states. They carry different items and the Japanese workers
actually seem to care about their jobs.
After getting ready
on Monday
morning, we headed out the door for our first adventure (alone) on the
subway system. Our destination was Shibuya, which is a big shopping
district and also home to the famous Shibuya intersection. I downloaded a
couple apps to help us navigate the train system and they came in super
handy our entire trip. You can enter your starting destination and
ending point and it will come up with all the different ways to get you
there. What would we do without technology? After having to make a
couple transfers, we found our way to Shibuya without getting lost. Not
very far from the station was the big intersection. This intersection is
the one in Fast and Furious and a few other movies. It's known as one
of busiest intersections in the world. We arrived about
9:30AM
and most of the stores were not open yet so there weren't that many
people. Don't get me wrong, there were still a bunch of people but I was
expecting mass chaos! While waiting for the stores to open up, we tried
to find the soccer field that is on top of a building that is shown in
Fast and Furious: Tokyo drift. We googled and read that is was on top of
a hotel. After getting turned around a couple times, we finally found
the hotel and rode the elevator up to the 25th floor. We didn't find a
soccer field, but we did get to sneak a pretty good view of the city.
From there, we saw the building with the soccer field so we headed over
there next. Once reaching the correct building and riding the elevator
up, we discovered that you have to pay to go on the field since it's
like a recreational place. Not wanting to pay, we ended our journey for
the soccer field there and now can at least say we've been there!
On a side note, one of my best moments of the trip happened in the
elevator ride going down. A couple older japanese ladies got into the
elevator with us and Chad was standing by all the buttons so we kind of
just looked at them to see what floor they needed to go to. They briefly
discussed it amongst themselves and then said it to Chad. I was able to
translate to Chad what floor they wanted! Last month, I took a japanese
class. I didn't retain a lot but I know my numbers 1-9 pretty well. I
think the japanese ladies were impressed that I knew what they said as
they kind of laughed and smiled when Chad picked the right number. Proud
moment!
Next, we found the Hachiko statue. If you have never seen the movie,
Hachi, you must watch it. I saw it for the first time when we first got
to Japan, and after seeing there was a statue of the dog in Japan, I
knew I needed to see it one day! It's such a cool story and I love that
they made a statue of Hachi where he always waited for his owner. Really
neat to see! By this time, it was
11:00AM
and all the stores were opening up. It was cool to go in to some
American brand stores like Under Armour, Adidas, and a 6-story Forever
21. We don't have shopping like that in Okinawa, so it's always nice
getting a little taste of home! All of the stores we went in had many
floors. It's exactly what you picture when you imagine Japan...
Everything is super close together and built upward. We definitely
walked several hundred stairs and a ton of miles for our first day in
Tokyo. We couldn't wait to get back to our hotel just to rest our feet
and legs. This was only the beginning of a week's worth of aching feet.
Whenever we complained or weren't sure if we wanted to go the extra mile
to see the next attraction, Chad came up with the slogan, YOTO, you
only (go to) Tokyo once, which became the motto of our trip.
Check out
Tokyo: Part 2 to read about our 2-day adventure at Tokyo Disney!
Disneyland was much like Disney World's Magic Kingdom. They have the
castle that looks similar to the one in the states and many of the same
rides. We must have picked a perfect day to go as we didn't have to wait
long in very many lines for all the rides. It was nice! We did get
rained on a couple times throughout the day but nothing major that would
ruin our day. The big thing in Tokyo Disney is the flavored popcorn.
There were a ton of people with Disney themed buckets hanging around
their necks which contained popcorn inside. We decided to try the Carmel
corn, which was pretty good. One of my favorite parts of the day was
watching the parade. It was cool to see all the different floats,
characters, and performers. We hadn't seen any Caucasian theme park
employees so we were kind of surprised to see that some of the
characters were not Asian! Speaking of ethnicity, we stuck out like a
sore thumb, which isn't surprising but we got MANY stares. Whenever we
saw other white people, we would ask each other where we thought they
were from based on their clothes, look, and accent lol. We even had this
group of Japanese teenage girls say Hi, Hello to us while waving and
when I said Hi back they acted like a celebrity just talked to them! So
funny! 
On Tuesday,
we were not in a big hurry to get to Disney like the day before because
we had already bought our ticket for the day. We slept in and then took
the 30 minute or so subway ride to Disney. Once we got off at the main
station, we had to take Disney's monorail to Disney Sea. Their train was
super cute. The windows were in the shape of Mickey and so were the
handles that people are standing hold on to. Once we entered DisneySea, I
was in awe. The park is so visually appealing, it's wonderful! The way
it is set up, is that you walk through like different countries. When
you enter the park, you're in Italy, and the streets are decorated like
so. This is definitely one of the best and most unique Disney parks that
I have been to. It's a must see for anyone who can make a trip to a
Tokyo, in my opinion.
So while we were waiting for our time to go on the ride we tried some
more popcorn flavors. The first one we tried was Strawberry, which was
pretty good. I liked Carmel better but Chad thinks it's a toss up. The
next one we tried just to say we tried it was Curry flavored. I found it
absolutely disgusting but Chad said it was alright. We ended up feeding
most of it to the hungry birds.
