Hi again from the land of the Rising Sun! On Wednesday I filled you in about the current trip I am undertaking by writing about the first three days of said trip – that’s a trip to Japan and South Korea. Today I complete the last four days in Tokyo before I headed south. It’s been seven years since I was in Japan, the country I have spent the most time in outside Australia as I lived here for two years. Anyways, Day Four was a big one…

DAY FOUR

This was my BIG DAY OUT – at Tokyo Disneyland!! I’ve been once before, but this time I was there by myself as convincing my wife to come wasn’t happening lol! Besides, she had appointments and so on, so I headed out from Yokohama station by a bus they put on to the Disneyland Resort Area which is in Chiba. It turned out to be a great little option even if I’m not a fan of buses. There is a way via trains but from Yokohama this took an hour and was definitely quicker as it avoided going through Tokyo – Chiba is on the other side of Tokyo.

The day was super sunny and thankfully, despite it feeling busy I knew full well that this wasn’t a super busy day at Disneyland. Next door by the way is Tokyo Disney Sea which I have visited before as well, but Disneyland trumps it quite clearly I think.

I revisited an old favourite ride – Splash Mountain, and I got on the one ride I remember missing last time, that is Space Mountain which is due to be revamped later this year. That was my longest wait at around 70 minutes. Although I did purchase priority passes for Splash Mountain and Beauty and the Beast – the latter of which turned out to be an excellent ride in giant tea cups spinning and basically dancing through the story of Beauty and the Beast. Even if hearing the songs with Japanese lyrics was a little strange!

All in all, Tokyo Disneyland is pretty awesome but I was lucky it was not yet Golden Week, because that’s when it gets completely packed!

DAY FIVE

Day Five was another super packed day. On my way into Tokyo I stopped off in the area of Kawasaki and checked out the Kanayama Temple. From there I headed to a metro stop known as ‘Tokyo Teleport Station’ – sadly they do NOT have a working teleport there which makes the name of the station false advertising in my book, but what can you do?

It was a short walk from there to the Unko Museum – ‘unko’ is Japanese for, wait for it – POOP. Yes it’s a poop museum. Talk about unique! There’s actually a branch opened up in Melbourne which umm… well I wonder how that will go down under. Don’t want to give too much away on this one, wait for the vlog! It’s a somewhat psychedelic experience!

I travelled to the district of Asakusa for the rest of my time this day and started with the Tobacco and Salt Museum, leaving questioning why a museum devoted to Tabacco didn’t have one single warning on the dangers of its use.

I checked out a couple of Asakusa temples including the famous Sensoji, before going up the Tokyo Skytree. I was lucky to get a slot to go up the Skytree as I booked the previous day and there were only a couple of timed entries (per hour) slots left. Sadly, the clouds had rolled in and Tokyo, whilst still impressive, was a little gloomy.

DAY SIX

I had intentionally kept Day Six free when planning because I figured that there would be a couple things I had planned to see that I hadn’t got around to seeing. As it turned out I had found the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama and the Sword Museum in Ryogoku closed when I went to them, so I visited them again on this day and thankfully they were both open. The Cup Noodles Museum was super packed too!

I also went to the Gashopon Department Store in Ikebukuro – a store filled with 3000 toy capsule machines. It was really quite something let me tell you! I rounded the day out with a few hours of karaoke with my wife’s family. As you do!

DAY SEVEN

Disaster struck today – when I got home to Yokohama at the end of the day I discovered all my audio for the day was non-existent! Last year I bought a GoPro with a Media Mod which has an excellent microphone and just clicks over the camera. I thought all my ‘missing audio’ problems were gone. But for some reason, the audio did not work at all on this particular day, even in the second part of the day where I had changed batteries which required me to unclip the Media Mod and reclip it back on after the change. I am at a loss to explain why it happened.

Nevertheless, I actually had a great day until I reviewed the footage in the evening! I stopped at Shibuya to see the crossing – the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world I believe, and then checked out the Meiji Shrine, devoted to the spirit of the Emperor Meiji who passed away in 1912.

I spent the rest of the day in Harajuku eating brightly coloured food, learning how to be a Ninja at the ‘Ninja Café Experience’ – cool experience, check them out – and visiting an Owl Café where there are actually owls, quite a few owls, inside the café. This was an interesting one, and I did question the ethics. Owls are allowed as pets in Japan, and there are cat cafes, dog cafes and I even saw a sign for a Hedgehog café.

All in all, my week in Tokyo sped past like the speed of… a shinkansen? I don’t know where it went or how it passed so fast! But the next day I was on a train headed south… But that’s for another blog!

Thanks for popping by as always today! Take care folks wherever it is you are in this big ol’ world right now… and May the Journey Never End!