Tokyo 2019, Day 1
It was time for us to sadly say ‘Goodbye’ to Korea, and head off to Japan for the second leg of our trip. We took the short flight from Busan to Tokyo, and arrived in the early afternoon at Narita. Being a huge Super Mario fan, I was happy to see this as we took the escalator down to Customs and Immigration:
Following the advice of some people online, we pre-booked our train ticket from Narita to Tokyo so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it when we arrived. Unfortunately, the Typhoon Ling Ling, which had already passed Japan a few days prior, had caused some flooding of the train tracks. This meant that we wouldn’t be able to take the Narita Express like we had originally planned, but instead, we would need to take a different train, which involved a change of trains at Ueno Station.
It added like 15 minutes and a stop, but it was fine given how devastating the typhoon was. We eventually made it to the station nearest our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo. The moment we exited the station, the heat and humidity hit us hard, it was gross. I distinctly remember a man walking past me, who had this contraption on his neck that basically had four mini fans coming out of it pointing up to his face. It looked ridiculous, but I’m sure it felt nice.
Fortunately for us, the hotel was only a 5 minute walk from the station, so we wouldn’t be out in the heat for very long. We finally get to the hotel, and take the elevator up to the lobby. I think it was shortly after 3pm at this point, but due to the logistical nightmare of the typhoon’s impact on the city, it was understandable that our room was not ready yet. The woman checking us in was very apologetic, and started to call around to every restaurant in the hotel (there are like 4 or something like that) to see if they had space for us to sit and have a free drink. We were impressed with how much effort she was putting into this, and finally was able to get us a table at their casual dining restaurant. There, Nick ordered a beer and I got some fruity mocktail:
We enjoyed amazing views of Tokyo from our table. Five minutes after we were seated, the woman who had checked us in found us in the restaurant to tell us that our room was ready, and she handed us our room key. We knew that Japan took extreme pride in their hospitality, and it’s not like this is our first time in Japan, but even this level of service surprised me.
We still had half the day left, so we decided to go to the nearby Currency Museum and see what that was all about:
Admission was free, and Nick likes going into these niche museums, and it seemed like a nice, low-key activity after spending many hours traveling. We couldn’t take any photos inside, but we do have this one exterior photo. The exhibit covered one floor, but it went into detail about how currency was made and used in Japan, starting from its beginnings many centuries ago.
For the remainder of the night, we decided to go to Akihabara. We visited this area on our first trip to Tokyo in 2006 (or 2007, I can’t remember), and we were curious to see how much has changed during that time. The moment you leave the train station, you are immediately thrown into what many people think of as Tokyo (tons of lighted billboards, tall buildings, arcades, and tech everywhere):
There were many girls dressed up as maids, trying to entice men to come to their maid cafes:
What surprised me about re-visiting Akihabara was that it seemed very similar to what I remembered over a decade ago. The storefronts all looked the same, and the stores in the alleyways were still there selling items like cables, manga, figurines, etc.
After walking around for a while, I suddenly remembered that Tokyo has many cafes with various animals. We did some research and found a hedgehog cafe in Akihabara, so we headed there. When we arrived, we saw many tables with small glass enclosures in the center of them, containing two hedgehogs. The person at the counter seated us at an empty table with gloves that we both needed to put on. And then he left, so we started picking up the hedgehogs that were in our enclosure. They were super cute, but they seemed sleepy, but at least we got to hold them. This cafe also had some owls that you could pet as well, but we couldn’t hold them:
After spending about an hour there, we needed dinner, and were craving curry. Fortunately for us, there was a nearby curry place a few blocks away from the hedgehog cafe.
So for those of you who’ve never visited Japan, here’s a tip. At many restaurants, the way you order is through a vending machine. You’ll know if your restaurant/cafe uses this because if you ask the person for a table, they’ll point you to a vending machine. For this curry restaurant, our vending machine looked like this:
It might look intimidating, especially if you can’t read Japanese, but what isn’t pictured here is an English menu that’s on the wall next to the vending machine. The only problem is that the English menu doesn’t map to the order on the vending machine, so we still had to find the specific curry dish in this sea of buttons. It took a few minutes, but with my basic ability to read Katakana, we found the items we wanted.
And at this point, it operates like any vending machine. You put the money into the machine, and then press the items you want. For each item, the machine will give you a ticket, and then your change at the end of the entire order, if applicable. You will then take these tickets, and hand them to the person standing near the front of the restaurant. They’ll usually gesture that you can take a seat, and then your food will be delivered to you once it’s ready. It’s actually quite efficient…
Our food came out and it looked amazing. I think I had something called the bacon curry, and Nick had some type of katsu curry:
It was time to head back to the hotel and rest up for the next day, which we planned to spend in Odaiba!