Our two weeks in Japan started with two quick days in Tokyo. We found a hotel near Ueno train station since it is one of the main train and subway stations in Tokyo and is at the end of a direct train (Keisie Skyliner) from Narita Airport. It is also a shinkansen (bullet train) station for trains headed across Japan to Nagano (our first stop after Tokyo) and Kanazawa or farther north. We stayed at the Mitsui Garden Inn Ueno. It was a perfect hotel for us as it was very convenient to train and subway stations and the room, while small, had a comfortable clean bed and a shower with good water pressure and plenty of hot water. It even provided complimentary pajamas!
After a long night’s sleep I woke up feeling quite groggy around 6:15 am. That feeling didn’t last long though, and after a nice hot shower, I did a little planning for the day. Angie woke up a little after 7:00. While she was getting ready, I headed out to see what was around our hotel. I quickly found a couple convenience stores, where I had fun picking out some items for breakfast. There are three main convenience store chains in Japan: Seven Eleven, Family Mart, and Lawson. They are stocked with snacks, quick meals, and drinks and quickly became our go-to for reliable, good quality snacks and light meals.
After fueling up, we headed out to explore the Asakusa neighborhood. It was a little over a mile from our hotel so we decided to walk there allowing us time to explore on our way. We had a nice time walking and looking at the businesses and people we passed. Taito city, the larger area encompassing Ueno park and Asakusa, seemed to be a pretty mellow part of Tokyo with the exception of the main tourist attractions and shopping districts which are quite crowded.
As an aside, we noticed that at least at the time of our visit in late February and early March, most tourists seem to be Japanese or other Asians. We saw very few Americans except when we were in very popular tourist areas such as the Team Lab art exhibits or some of the shrines in Kyoto. While we saw other Caucasians, it seemed to us that most were Australians, Brits, or other Europeans.
We ended up by the Sumida River at lunch time and thought it would be nice to get lunch and eat it in a park by the river. It took us a while to find a place where we could get take out and ended up getting curry from Coco Curry, a popular chain. We took our lunch to the park and quickly learned that we were the only people eating. Apparently it is not common to eat food in parks unless there are food vendors in the area. And public trash cans are very scarce in Japan. We carried our trash for quite a while until we found a public trash can.
After lunch we took the subway back to Ueno station. We found the JR station and were able to pick up our Shinkansen tickets from ticket machines and our JR west ticket from Toyama to Takayama from the JR east travel center. The travel center was not busy and we were able to walk right up to an agent who was very helpful.
We came back to the room dropped off some things and had a bit of a rest before venturing back out to Ueno park, shopping stalls and dinner at Tamatoya where they made okonomiyaki at our table.
That day, we completed 15300 steps and walked a little over 7 miles according to my phone.
The next morning we had tickets to Team Lab Borderless for 9:00 am. We took the Ginza line to the the exhibit and were happy to find an entrance to the subway about 50 feet from our hotel entrance. We weren’t so happy when the trains that pulled up were packed with people headed to work. It was standing room only for several stops until the car cleared enough to allow us to sit. It took a bit to find the entrance to the exhibit, but we found it and were in line a few minutes before it opened.
A few pictures from the exhibit follow below. There is no set path or map to see the exhibit and many rooms display more than one exhibit and you are encouraged to revisit rooms at different times to see if the exhibit has changed.
After about 3 hours, we felt we were done and ventured out for lunch. Angie found a gluten free cafe nearby where we were the only customers for quite a while and had a nice relaxing lunch. It felt good to sit down. We were both feeling a little jet lagged.
After lunch we took a subway up to explore a couple of areas that are known for trendy fashion shopping. The first was kind of sleepy, but Takeshita street was packed with people and interesting shops. The were several “animal” cafes where you could pay to spend time with animals such as samoyed dogs, river otters, miniature pigs, and hedgehogs and guinea pigs.
We then walked down to Shibuya, crossed the scramble, and made our way up in to Shibuya Sky observatory. It was breezy and cold, but we found a couch and managed to stay for the sunset.
We found a place with Taiwanese/Chinese food and had dinner before heading back to our hotel. We got on at the first stop, but the train quickly filled up with people headed home from work.
