G’day Folks! I hope this blog finds you well. I planned to post on my current trip last Saturday, unfortunately I have been so super busy it wasn’t humanly possible to get it done. As you can tell from the title, I am now in Japan! I have a three and a bit week getaway which sees me in Japan for two weeks followed by a week in a new country for me – South Korea.

I have spent the first week of that trip in Yokohama and Tokyo, staying in Yokohama (or just outside of) and visiting Tokyo every single day. I write this post right now as I scoot down the country on a Shinkansen at superfast speeds enjoying ample space to spread out and use the laptop which is super nice.

So let me at least get started by recounting the first few days of the trip. Eventually when I have cleared the backlog of Dhaka to Dakar and my South-East Asian trip from November last year I will get into more solid details about the places I visited, but for now I’ll just go through what I’ve been up to briefly as more of a collective, short, diary entry.

DAY ONE

My wife and I flew out of Melbourne on an all-day flight to Tokyo on Japan Airlines in Economy. It was a fairly uneventful flight but I don’t recommend taking a 720am flight because we were awake at 3am to get ready for a 330am pickup to get to the airport 3 hours before our flight which is what they ask you to do in Australia.

The airport actually was busy, but the owners of the shops didn’t seem to be aware of the number of passengers with early morning flights because barely anything was open except the duty free stores you have to pass through on your way to the gates.

Japan Airlines were pretty good, can’t complain a very solid, comfortable Economy product. We got in ten minutes late and they apologised, the immigration and back pickup at Narita Airport was efficient and fast. We grabbed the Narita Express to Yokohama, and were there by about 6pm. Only one hour behind Australia, it was a long day but by not going overnight our body clocks were pretty much unharmed, allowing for an early morning with no jetlag the next day.

DAY TWO

The weather was a bit overcast, but I headed off to a place called ‘Sanrio Puroland’. If you’re wondering what the heck that is, well, Sanrio is the company that owns ‘Hello Kitty’ – and it’s a theme park, totally inside, featuring Sanrio characters including Hello Kitty. To say I was worried when I saw the outside is an understatement. It was bright pink and garish. You’re welcomed in with a high level of enthusiasm that Japan is famous for – ie people are overtly genki.

All in all though, despite the trepidation somehow I enjoyed the few hours I spent there. I took a couple of rides – there are no thrill rides there – and I met a character or two and I watched a show and looked at the displays. I think because I was vlogging, well that helped me get into it a bit. It’s no Disneyland, but it’s certainly something!

DAY THREE

This day was a massive day, the longest day of all I would say. It started at 6am when I got up to take bus and train all the way into Tokyo to Ryogoku, the district famous for Sumo! I had booked a tour of an Early Morning Sumo Training Session through Viator, and we went to what they call a ‘stable’, where the Sumo Wrestlers train.

We got to watch over an hour of training which included match simulation. We were allowed to take photos but not film. Afterwards we were shown the stadium where they have the tournaments in Tokyo three times a year and next door was a space with a full sized Sumo Ring.

That early morning experience over I headed to the funky district of Akihabara. Here I tried my hand a skill tester games which I am now sure are completely rigged, I had (most of) a bowl of MONSTER Ramen, played a retro game (very badly) at a place called ‘Super Potato’ and gawked at some of the stuff for sale there.

Oh yeah, I got over my inhibitions to see what a Maid Café was like too, spending an hour in the @ Home Maid Café in the Don Quijote Centre. This centre also has AKB48 shows (actually by AKB48) but sadly they were sold out the whole week (didn’t find out until the day I was visiting). The Maid Café experience featured an awful lot of Genki! A couple of maids spoke English. @ Home Maid Cafes are a chain and they are I think a bit of a ‘watered down’ version, and foreigners are catered for more here and the patrons weren’t all male either which actually helped. I left wondering what life is like with a job like beings a ‘maid’ in one of these cafes.

Following Akihabara I visited the small kite museum and tried for the Pokemon Café which was sadly booked out – who knew you had to book a café? Well I do now! I ended up booking a number of experiences in the end in Tokyo, and if there’s one recommendation I can make for you in this blog, it’s to book ahead where you can because otherwise you will miss out in Tokyo.

I finished the day with a walk along what they called ‘Character Street’ – it’s a set of shops on the B1 floor of Tokyo Station and the shops all relate to different anime/cartoon/manga characters including Pokemon, Snoopy, Godzilla and Prism. The colours and lights of Tokyo shine bright in so many parts of the city!

So next post from here I’m aiming for Saturday this week to complete the last four days of Tokyo – including my birthday visit to Tokyo Disneyland! Thanks for popping by today! Take care wherever you maybe – May the Journey Never End!