You Only go to Tokyo Once (Toyko: Part 1)

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!