Japan 2015, Day Four

Despite some half-cooked plans to wake up early and do a final bit of Tokyo sightseeing before we left, my traitorous alarm clock didn’t sound off and my traitorous body kept sleeping, until there wasn’t time to do anything but drag our bags to the bus which would drag us to the airport. We arrived in Osaka a little after noon.

Our hotel, Hotel Taiyo, was a kilometer from Tennoji station, where we were dropped off. It’s fantastically located – just a minute’s walk away from the Dobutsuen-mae subway station and five minutes away from Shin-Imamiya Station on the JR Osaka Loop Line. This map was in the lobby, along with friendly graphics showing us tourist locations and how to get around.

We didn’t have anything planned for that day, so we went about at a leisurely pace. We started by having ramen and gyoza at a shop near our hotel.

And then we took the subway from Dobutsuen-mae. Despite taking the subway from there several times over the course of our stay in Osaka, my aunt never got the hang of pronouncing it. Dobutsuen-mae.

We took the subway to Nagai, and exited near Nagai Park.

And really, I just went because I heard Osaka Oktoberfest was going on.

A photo posted by @missfiona on May 19, 2015 at 3:38am PDT

I had two beers there (Warsteiner verum and Warsteiner dunkel), and I’d had a chu-hi at the ramen place earlier, so I was a little giddy when I dragged everyone back to the subway and to Abenobashi (via Tennoji Station), where at my aunt’s request, I found the Onitsuka Tiger branch at Hoop mall, where she bought new kicks for everyone. Including me! Thanks, tita!

On the way back to the station we bought takoyaki from this guy – who, as luck would have it, was a fellow Filipino! It was nice hearing familiar words from a stranger in a strange land. He gave us two extra pieces of takoyaki. Maraming salamat, kuya! From there, it was back to the hotel, and to bed early.

This is a post low in content because we didn’t really do much – half the day was eaten up by aerial travel and the rest of the day was not planned for. Not only that, but my camera’s battery gave out while we were at Oktoberfest so I didn’t get to take many pictures.

But mostly, I was saving my energy for the next day’s destination – Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, via Universal Studios Japan.

Japan 2015, Day Three: A High-Altitude Detour

I’ve already said I didn’t want to go on this segment of the trip, right? Even though a lot of things in Tokyo are closed on Mondays, I still thought staying there was preferable to what we did: taking a tour bus up to Fuji. But I had to keep my end of the deal, and the tour was paid for, so off I went.

On our way out of Tokyo we ran into ‘traffic’, which our tour guide apologised profusely for. As a lifelong resident of Manila, I had to laugh. That’s what the Japanese call traffic? The bus was still moving regularly. It was basically The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift compared to what I would have been experiencing had I been at home taking a northbound bus on EDSA.

Here’s the thing about Mt Fuji: she is a notoriously shy mountain. The tour paraphernalia and in fact every guide-to-Japan-on-the-internet ever says she’s shrouded in fog most days this time of year and is thus incredibly difficult to see.

The photo above is basically the best I could do at getting a shot of Fuji. We saw her maybe three times the entire day, for about ten seconds each time before the fog obscured her again.

I think it’s worth noting that – as a lifelong resident of a tropical country – this was the first time in my life I’d ever seen snow. There was even a little of it in small patches on the ground on our way up to fifth station – mostly melted, but there nonetheless, so that was an exciting little novelty for me.

So this is Mt Fuji Fifth Station. It’s the highest part of Mt Fuji you can reach with a road vehicle. It’s so high up you’re basically in a cloud. Everything was surrounded in this kind of thick fog most of the time I was there.

This is what it looks like when the fog clears, incidentally.

In all honesty, there wasn’t much to see unless you were willing to stand around for an hour waiting for the fog around the mountain to clear. One of the only notable attractions was a Shinto shrine. The ema board had messages from tourists from all over the world. I left one of my own on there too.

Since we didn’t feel like standing around in the cold waiting for a glimpse of the summit, we instead ducked into one of the many tourist shops around to warm ourselves by the space heater and browse the wares on display.

I bought some of my obligatory omiage here – several boxes of strawberry cheesecake Kit Kats. Kit Kats come in an astounding array of flavours in Japan. I knew about regular chocolate, naturally, and I even had some of the green tea Kit Kats via Family Mart back home in Manila, but Japan is the sole proprietor of flavours like strawberry cheesecake, red bean, rum raisin, and many more.

Here’s my final attempt at a shot of Fuji – fog again, as usual.

At least, on our way down we got a spectacular view of some mountains that weren’t Fuji.

The tour bus was going to take us to Hakone next. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t like tours because they only scratched the surface of what there was to see. There’s nothing that proves this more than our trip to Hakone. Hakone is UNESCO geopark, the location of a noted Shinto shrine and several museums. It’s also well-known for having fantastic hot springs. Did we experience any of these things?

No, but we did go on a boat.

We took a thirty-minute boat ride on the picturesque Lake Ashihara, on a ship designed to look like a colourful Pirates of the Carribean-esque pirate ship. Needless to say I wasn’t that impressed.

Here I am sitting on a fake cannon on a fake pirate ship, trying to make the best of it.

When we got off the boats we were shuffled back onto the bus, at which point the tour gave us two options – we could take the bus back to Tokyo, or we could get on the Shinkansen at Odawara.

So we took the Shinkansen, because I was dying to get back to Tokyo. And taking the Shinkansen is just one of those things you have to do when you’re in Japan, right?

It’s a stunningly fast train – not the fastest in the world anymore, but still so fast that the timetables run to the second and the average delay is something like thirty seconds. To a girl who takes the Metro Manila MRT every day this is an astonishing marvel of speed and punctuality. We were back in Tokyo in no time at all.We bought bento at Tokyo station before taking the subway back to Shinjuku…

… where we saw Godzilla on our way to our hotel! (Fortunately for Tokyo, It’s a fixture on the roof of the Toho Cinemas Shinjuku building, and not the real thing come to destroy us all.)

Japan 2015, Day One and Two: Tokyo Shuffle

Having painted the broad strokes of our trip in my previous post, I can now go on at length about specific things in separate posts.

So, Tokyo. As I said earlier, I was a bit miffed that we would be wasting an entire day going to Mt Fuji and Hakone. Since we would be arriving on Saturday evening, going to Mt Fuji on Monday, and departing at around noon on Tuesday, that effectively left us with only one full day in Tokyo proper. On top of that, we had a scheduled morning tour on Sunday that I didn’t particularly want to go to either. But I had to deal with it.

We arrived at Narita at around seven or eight in the evening, and promptly took the limousine bus to Shinjuku Station. The bus deposited us and our luggage at the west exit. Our hostel, Hikari House in Hyakunin-cho, was over a kilometer away, so we got to walking. The hikes to and from the Limousine Bus stops were easily the most unpleasant parts of our trip – no matter how novel it is to be in Tokyo for the first time, it’s not going to make those bags any lighter.

This is where Google Maps and I first took charge. I charged forward, phone in hand, trying to make sense of Tokyo streets, reassuring the people behind me that I knew what I was doing – or, at the very least, that the GPS satellites above us knew what they were doing.

Somehow, though, as we turned the very last corner to get to our hotel, half of our party – my aunt and my younger cousin – got separated. So as my cousin Gwen and I checked in, the other two members of our traveling party hired a cab… that simply took them once around the block and then back again. So much for the ‘no cabs’ resolution.

They arrived about fifteen minutes later. Once we had settled into our bunks, we ventured back out into Tokyo in search of dinner. We headed south, in the general direction of Shinjuku Station, seeing the sights before eventually deciding to enter a nearby restaurant for dinner.

I don’t even know what the restaurant was called, honestly. But they had wagyu beef (apparently) and English-language menus, and we were getting hungry.

We headed back to the hotel in the knowledge that we had to wake up early for the next day’s tour.

The tour we were scheduled on was a Hato Bus ‘Tokyo Morning’ tour. The bus picked us up from Shinjuku, but the tour itself began after we transferred buses at Hamamatsucho. The itinerary was: Tokyo Tower, the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens, and Asakusa Shrine. The tour terminated at Tokyo Station, but you could have the bus drop you off earlier at Akihabara.

So off we went the next day, to Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo Tower provided a great view of the city, but it was a bit too touristy for my liking. We were just one of the countless busloads of tourists who were herded into the elevators, given thirty minutes to scuttle about the observation decks, before being shoved back into our tourist buses.

We almost got separated from the tour here — not that I would have minded, really, but we got back to the bus in the nick of time. The next location we were shuttled off to was Tokyo Imperial Palace. We spent fifteen minutes in the Outer Gardens. Quite frankly, I thought we were wasting our time. We were there for fifteen minutes and we didn’t even get to go inside and see the inner gardens, so it felt like a waste. I mean, the Outer Gardens were pleasant enough, but it was annoying knowing there was so much more to the place than our tour could show us.

So after fifteen minutes we moved on to our third and final stop of the tour, Asakusa Shrine.

We actually lucked out here. Our visit to Asakusa shrine coincided with the penultimate day of Sanja Matsuri, one of the biggest Shinto celebrations in Tokyo.On the second day of Sanja Matsuri, devotees carry mikoshi, portable Shinto shrines, around the streets of Asakusa.

The atmosphere around the shrine was lively and festive. Throngs of people, locals and tourists alike, were out and about: paying their respects to the shrine, following the mikoshi processions, or buying things from the many stands outside the shrine proper.

Thankfully, the tour was rather lenient with us for this segment — we were given enough time to look around before we had to get back on the bus. Naturally, we took the opportunity to go foodtripping – grilled wagyu beef, candied apples, freshly squeezed orange juice…

Our hunger sated, we went back to our bus, which then dropped us off at Akihabara.

For our first order of business, we found a maid cafe. Because of course we had to go to a maid cafe, the trip wouldn’t be complete without it. I have been waiting all my life to hear a girl in a meido outfit greet me okaerinasai, goshuujin-sama.

We went to No. 1 Maidreamin, which had a no-photos policy. Disappointing but fair enough, honestly – having poor schlubs like us pay to get our photographs taken with them is how the girls get their money. I can respect that.

I got this adorable photo of my cousin in animal ears, though. Meido partially visible in the background.

After lunch at the maid cafe, we walked around Akihabara a bit. Akiba is fascinating. I didn’t even stray that far from the station, and I found what appeared to be a four-story department store specialising in… adult paraphernalia, if you know what I mean. Then of course there were all the arcades, animu-related shops, and electronics that Akiba is known for.

Surprisingly, I didn’t end up buying anything. I nearly did, though. There was an adorable SD figure of Ononoki Yotsugi from the Monogatari series that caught my eye, so naturally I looked around to see if a similar one of (mai waifu) Senjougahara Hitagi existed. Alas, I couldn’t find one, so my money stayed in my pocket for once. Instead, I accompanied my cousin as she popped into a nearby electronics store to buy earphones to replace the ones she’d broken on the flight.

Satisfied with our lot, we walked to nearby Iwamotocho Station to take the subway to Shibuya.

When we emerged from Shibuya’s underground, this was happening. One of the roads leading into Shibuya Crossing was completely blocked off to motorists. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand or more people were performing a coordinated dance in the streets, dressed in colorful outfits. I still don’t know what was going on, or what this was for.

We watched the parade for a few minutes, before moving on to our primary motive for being in Shibuya.

And what was that primary motive? Why, to visit Hachiko, of course. I had to pay my respects to the dear girl.

Some nice young people on the other side of Shibuya crossing offered free hugs. Who was I to refuse?

After that, we wandered around Shibuya for a while. We found the enormous three-floor Uniqlo at Dogenzaka, where we stocked up on clothes at prices much cheaper than they would be in the Philippines. The dress I bought there might show up in pictures of Day Five. After that, we took the subway to Higashishinjuku, and from there walked westward back to our hostel.

We all rested our feet for a while back at the hostel. My cousins took the opportunity to make (and eat) some Popin Cookin food miniatures.

An hour later, I departed the hostel alone, and made my way to nearby Kabukicho. I had a ticket to Robot Restaurant waiting for me.

How do I even begin to describe Robot Restaurant? It’s like someone gave an eight year old with a penchant for robots some LSD, an unlimited budget, and carte blanche to put together any kind of show he wanted.

Robot Restaurant isn’t really a restaurant – you can get away with not eating anything while you’re there. What it is is ninety minutes of dancing girls, dancing robots, flashing lights, and loud music. If that doesn’t sound awesome, it’s my fault. It’s awesome. It’s loud, bright, in-your-face awesome.

 My day in Tokyo was an amazing experience, almost all throughout. I went to bed that night with my head still buzzing from the wonderful day I’d had – but I also went to bed even more regretful that I’d have to sacrifice an entire day in Tokyo to go up to Mt Fuji and Hakone the next day. One day in Tokyo was never going to be enough.

Japan 2015: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

When I was about thirteen, my best friend and I took a world map and put dots on every city or country we wanted to visit in our lifetime. Seeing as we were idealistic thirteen year-olds with no sense of budget, the map looked like it had chickenpox by the time we were done with it. I’ve been lucky enough to visit some of the dots on the map since then, but of all the dots, the one on Tokyo was one of the biggest.

Japan! I’ve been a longtime weeaboo consumer of Japanese subculture, so the thought of a visit to the land from whence it all came has always been a dream. So you can imagine my childlike delight when my aunt suggested this trip to me. One week in Japan –  including Tokyo, Osaka, and Universal Studios Japan. Universal Studios Japan, or more specifically – The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

But let’s put a pin in that first. If there’s one thing I am, more than a weeaboo, it’s a Potter fan. My fangirl squealing about that particular aspect of the trip is enough for its own post.

The proposed itinerary was as follows: Arrival in Tokyo on Saturday, May 16 – in the evening. We’d stay in Tokyo until Tuesday, May 19, at which point we’d fly to Osaka. The entirety of the next day was set aside for Universal Studios Japan. We would stay in Osaka until the morning of Saturday, May 23, then we would fly back to Tokyo and then back to Manila. In addition to the day at Universal, we also had two tours scheduled – a half-day Tokyo tour on Saturday, and a full-day trip to Mt Fuji 5th Station and Hakone on Monday. I want to go into detail about specific parts of the trip, but this post serves as a broad overview.

My cousins, and my aunt

I’m ostensibly an adult, but financing a trip like this alone is out of my pay grade. My aunt offered to pay for half of my airfare, as well as the hotel and food. Everything else, I would have to shoulder myself – half of the airfare, the Universal Studios ticket, and anything I happened to buy on the trip. This was a very nice offer, but familial generosity wasn’t the only driving force behind it – I was also tasked with helping to take care of my two cousins, aged ten and twelve, while I was there. Like a yaya with perks, we joked.

Up in the air

Airfare

The plane tickets were purchased during a travel fair at a discounted price. All four flights – Japan Airlines Economy Ctlass, MNL-NRT, NRT-ITM, ITM-NRT, NRT-MNL – came out to USD 368.90 (¥45656.91, or 16480.42 PHP, in current exchange rates). That, to me, is insane. I’m still staring incredulously at my ticket, racking up all the fares in amazement. It’s four flights in total, with Japan Airlines, which is not a budget airline by any stretch of the imagination – it’s a fantastic deal.

Accommodations

The dorm at Hikari House.

In Tokyo, we had four beds at Hikari House, in Hyakunin-cho, Shinjuku-ku – in a female dormitory with a shared bathroom, for approximately USD 30.00 (around ¥3700) per night per person. In Osaka, we had two twin rooms with a shared bathroom at Hotel Taiyo in Nishinari-ku, listed at ¥3700 as per night.

Food

Bento is love, bento is life

As for food? Well, Japan has convenience stores on every corner. The plan was to subsist on Family Mart/7-Eleven/Lawson bento and instant ramen for most of the trip.

Transport

Iwamotocho Station, Tokyo

I am enamored by Japan’s rail system. Transport was not really a thing we budgeted for – we resolved to take no taxis if we could help it, and simply walk and take trains everywhere, apart from the Limousine Bus taking us and our bags to and from the airport (and even then, we had to walk about a kilometer between the bus stops and our hostels each time – dragging heavy luggage the entire way). We didn’t use the trains enough to make purchasing JR Passes worth it, especially since we would be flying, not taking the Shinkansen, between Tokyo and Osaka (though if we had taken the Shinkansen, it would have been worth it). We had one very short shinkansen ride, Odawara to Tokyo for ¥3220, but apart from that the most we spent on a single train ride was ¥560 for the JR Kyoto line between Kyoto and Osaka.

LTE SIM

I could not have navigated my way around Japan without the help of the internet – I couldn’t have done anything without GPS and Google Maps and train timetables at my fingertips. It was very important for me to have access to the Internet on demand, so I bought a prepaid sim card from So-net – ¥3000, valid for 30 days, with a 1GB data cap. It was just about enough for me – I hit the 1GB cap on the seventh day while on the bus to the airport.

I cannot overstate how invaluable this connection was to me: it allowed me to navigate like a pro, translate basic sentences on the fly, and look up information about our destinations on demand. The internet is a wonderful tool.

Tickets

The most magical place on Ea– wait, wrong theme park.

A day pass at Universal Studios is ¥7200 for an adult, even if that adult has regressed to eight years old out of childlike glee. In addition to the ticket, I also had to acquire a Universal Express Pass 5 for ¥5200 – a pass that shortens the wait time for five of the rides at Universal (including the only one I cared about, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey).

We already had our Universal Studios day passes purchased in advance, but we didn’t have Express Passes yet – we were told to purchase those from Loppi machines at a Lawson. Amazingly, despite the ticketing machine being in Japanese, I managed to get our express passes. I showed the very helpful attendant at Lawson this page for the Express Pass ticket codes and somehow, despite my inability to speak Japanese and his inability to speak English, we mimed and pointed our way to the right place.

If, like me, you’ve only come to see Harry Potter, it’s important to note that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter has timed entry – if you’re only on a Day Pass without an Express pass, you have to line up again inside the park to get a timed entry ticket, which dictates the time when you will be allowed to enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter area. If you get an Express Pass 5 or 7, your timed entry ticket is included with it.

The kind of thing you get at Robot Restaurant.

Universal wasn’t the only thing I needed tickets for — One of the only things I did solo while in Japan was go to Robot Restaurant – It’s a bewildering, enchanting, and potentially seizure-inducing display of light and sound and dancing girls and robots and dancing robot girls in Kabukicho, Shinjuku – weird in the way only Japan can be weird. It’s worthy of more praise, but that will come in a separate post. A ticket is ¥7000, less if you pay online in advance or book through your hotel, and the optional meal – which I elected not to get– is ¥1000.

Tours

I wasn’t keen on the tours — especially the planned Fuji/Hakone tour, which would take me out of Tokyo for a full day. Generally speaking, I’m not fond of most guided tours– I feel like they only show you the surface of things, and rush you off to the next stop before you can get a real appreciation of what you just saw. Alas, the Hato Bus tour of Fuji/Hakone had already been paid for — not by me — and I had obligations to fulfill. The Tokyo Morning tour, on the other hand, I wasn’t that opposed to: I was planning to hit up two of its three destinations myself, and it would deposit us in Akihabara (another one of my planned destinations) at the end. But while Fuj/Hakone had its merits, I really don’t think it was worth the price listed on the website (though it was probably purchased for less than that, given all the travel fair discounts), nor was it worth leaving Tokyo for.

Overall, the trip didn’t go exactly as I had envisioned it – but of course it didn’t. It never goes exactly according to plan. I was capable of handling the surprises thrown at me, though – be it delayed trains or sudden changes in itinerary, or relatives getting lost in Shinjuku without you to guide them. Japan has a reputation for being difficult for tourists to navigate, but thanks to the abundant information available online and the tireless hospitality of the Japanese people, I never felt lost.