Sarahboo
100% geek
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
Hi everyone!
We returned from our 2 week trip to Japan last Thursday, and I finally feel human again and I want to share our trip report! I'll be gradually working on it over the next couple of weeks, but follow along on our YouTube channel as well!
Here's a link to our channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYyIYo6Kxy0RwTDqbMwxicQ
And here's a link to our first video about Japan - our souvenir haul:
Our basic Itinerary that I'll be doing posts for:
Day One - Travel and Kurand Sake Market
Day Two - MariCar Go Karts, Shinjuku
Day Three - Wine tasting in that Katsunuma Valley and Robot Restaurant
Day Four - Akihabara
Day Five - DisneySea
Day Six - Disneyland
Day Seven - Tsukiji Market, Ginza, Pokemon Center, Tapas Molecular
Day Eight - TeamLab Borderless, Trick Art Museum, Ferris Wheel, Unicorn Gundam
Day Nine - Asakusa, Senso-ji Temple, Piss Alley
Day Ten - Shinkansen to Osaka, Dotonbori, Yuki's Bar
Day Eleven - A day of rest, ramen, conbini food, Netflix (and hangover recovery)
Day Twelve - Kyoto
Day Thirteen - Hep 5 - Gudetama Cafe, Amerimura, VR Experience, Izakaya Toyo, Yuki's Bar
Day Fourteen - Shinkansen to Tokyo Station, Narita Express to Narita, and Fly home
Day One: Travel Day -
We have 4 kids (one in college) - so we got our middle two kids off to school and then my BFF picked us up to take us to the airport. We brought my youngest along and my BFF dropped him off at school after dropping us at the airport. We wanted to get to the airport extra early so we could just check in, send our luggage off, and have breakfast and a couple of mimosas before the flight. We frequent the Country Cat Cafe at PDX. DELISH.
See you in Tokyo, Artoo and C3PO!
At Portland Airport - it's required that you take a picture of your feet with the airport carpet for every trip. It became a thing when we had the old airport carpet and it was so distinctive and weird that it took on a life of its own. They replaced the carpet a few years ago with a more modern take on the old carpet, but it's still a thing everyone does:
Also, I will give mad props to our Sketchers with Memory Foam featured in this picture of our feet. We walked 10-15 miles a day and our feet never hurt (our backs and hips sometimes, but never our feet).
We took the direct flight from Portland to Narita airport on Delta, and the ride was BUMPY. It went on for so long that I actually got sick. Other than that, the flight was comfortable and quick.
We landed in Narita about 3:30 and headed right for the restroom. Protip: They were doing construction and we had to walk FOREVER to get to a restroom. I thought I was going to die. That being said, two thumbs up for the airport toilets. I wanted to hit all of the buttons, but then I couldn't turn the music off so I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom. I'm pretty sure Chris thought I had been abducted.
The wait at immigration was about 10-15 mins, but then customs was super fast. As soon as we got through customs, there were two places to exchange cash (on either side of the exit from customs to the main airport). The rate was better than if we exchanged through our bank or in the states. We exchanged about $1500 US cash, and then took money out of 7-11 ATMS the rest of the time.
Immediately after we exchanged money, we were asked if we wanted to be on Japanese TV, so here we are being interviewed. A friend in Japan said it was a popular Tokyo TV show. The people who interviewed us said it would air Monday at 7pm (I think? Maybe it was 6:00), but we didn't try to watch it. I'm afraid they just made fun of us the whole time. I'm a pretty good sport about that kind of thing, but I don't want to see it. :heee:
We grabbed Suica cards and a round-trip ticket for the Narita express. Here's a tip about the NEX - we went to Shibuya station, but wanted to return from Tokyo station. That was totally okay to do and instead of an actual return ticket, we were given a voucher for Narita Express in the Tokyo Metro area, so you can just exchange it for tickets at whatever station you'll use for your return. It was significantly cheaper to purchase round trip tickets than two one-way tickets.
We hopped right on the train there and rode a little over an hour to Shibuya station. We had the unfortunate timing to land in Shibuya Station during Friday night rush hour. It wouldn't have been a big deal later in the trip - but my eyes must have popped out of my head trying to navigate Shibuya station with that many people, hauling our luggage behind us.
We found the right exit, and thanks to GREAT instructions from our Air BnB host, we had no trouble finding our apartment. We dropped our luggage off and then headed back out because we had reservations for an all you can drink sake market.
Here's a link to the AirBNB we used in Shibuya - we LOVED this location. It was a quick walk to anything we could have wanted and about 5 mins to the station. It was a small apartment, but it was perfect for 2 people.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/29036165?source_impression_id=p3_1574963847_2XVWayrM08eyz9CD
Kurand Sake Market was awesome. If I could do it again, I would have reserved it for a different night because we were tired from the trip and I think I would have enjoyed it more after being in Japan for a few days and learning a bit more about sake. BUT! We had a blast there anyway. We pre-reserved and pre-paid for our seats. You can bring in your own food, so we stopped by a Family Mart and grabbed some egg salad sandwich, onigiri, chips, and a blueberry/whipped cream sandwich.
Once they seat you, you can have up to three glasses of sake in front of you at a time and you just walk up to the coolers with about 100 varieties and pour your own sake. You can have as much as you want! When we were there, the place was packed and it looked like a popular place to go after work. Groups of friends were meeting there and they would all bring some food item and then share with their friends.
You can kind of see here how it works with the coolers of sake and then the table in front of the coolers are for pouring your sake. They have a variety of glasses and our package came with some souvenir sake cups that we show in the video above.
We stayed a couple of hours and then stopped by a cute little bar across from our apartment. We became friends with the owner, Akira, who didn't speak English. It's really amazing how you find ways to communicate, though. Between charades and Google Translate, we had a great time talking with him and we went 4 or 5 times while we were in Tokyo. He gave us a CD with his favorite Japanese hip hop, and we gave him a CD of Chris's music and some of our friends who perform Hip Hop. We have some other pictures from Akira's bar that I'll share later but I did take a picture of his English drink menu that night. He had other drinks and even food available, but it was all in Japanese. He offered us other things than are on the English menu, though, so I'm certain that if we knew what was available he would have served us anything we wanted.
When we became friends (and follow each other on IG now even though we don't speak the same language ❤ ) he stopped charging us the cover charge.
Music ended up being a common theme for us - every time we made friends in Japan it started with connecting over music.
A few highballs later, and we stumbled across the street to our apartment where we promptly fell asleep.
Stay Tuned for Day 2!
We returned from our 2 week trip to Japan last Thursday, and I finally feel human again and I want to share our trip report! I'll be gradually working on it over the next couple of weeks, but follow along on our YouTube channel as well!
Here's a link to our channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYyIYo6Kxy0RwTDqbMwxicQ
And here's a link to our first video about Japan - our souvenir haul:
Our basic Itinerary that I'll be doing posts for:
Day One - Travel and Kurand Sake Market
Day Two - MariCar Go Karts, Shinjuku
Day Three - Wine tasting in that Katsunuma Valley and Robot Restaurant
Day Four - Akihabara
Day Five - DisneySea
Day Six - Disneyland
Day Seven - Tsukiji Market, Ginza, Pokemon Center, Tapas Molecular
Day Eight - TeamLab Borderless, Trick Art Museum, Ferris Wheel, Unicorn Gundam
Day Nine - Asakusa, Senso-ji Temple, Piss Alley
Day Ten - Shinkansen to Osaka, Dotonbori, Yuki's Bar
Day Eleven - A day of rest, ramen, conbini food, Netflix (and hangover recovery)
Day Twelve - Kyoto
Day Thirteen - Hep 5 - Gudetama Cafe, Amerimura, VR Experience, Izakaya Toyo, Yuki's Bar
Day Fourteen - Shinkansen to Tokyo Station, Narita Express to Narita, and Fly home
Day One: Travel Day -
We have 4 kids (one in college) - so we got our middle two kids off to school and then my BFF picked us up to take us to the airport. We brought my youngest along and my BFF dropped him off at school after dropping us at the airport. We wanted to get to the airport extra early so we could just check in, send our luggage off, and have breakfast and a couple of mimosas before the flight. We frequent the Country Cat Cafe at PDX. DELISH.
See you in Tokyo, Artoo and C3PO!
At Portland Airport - it's required that you take a picture of your feet with the airport carpet for every trip. It became a thing when we had the old airport carpet and it was so distinctive and weird that it took on a life of its own. They replaced the carpet a few years ago with a more modern take on the old carpet, but it's still a thing everyone does:
Also, I will give mad props to our Sketchers with Memory Foam featured in this picture of our feet. We walked 10-15 miles a day and our feet never hurt (our backs and hips sometimes, but never our feet).
We took the direct flight from Portland to Narita airport on Delta, and the ride was BUMPY. It went on for so long that I actually got sick. Other than that, the flight was comfortable and quick.
We landed in Narita about 3:30 and headed right for the restroom. Protip: They were doing construction and we had to walk FOREVER to get to a restroom. I thought I was going to die. That being said, two thumbs up for the airport toilets. I wanted to hit all of the buttons, but then I couldn't turn the music off so I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom. I'm pretty sure Chris thought I had been abducted.
The wait at immigration was about 10-15 mins, but then customs was super fast. As soon as we got through customs, there were two places to exchange cash (on either side of the exit from customs to the main airport). The rate was better than if we exchanged through our bank or in the states. We exchanged about $1500 US cash, and then took money out of 7-11 ATMS the rest of the time.
Immediately after we exchanged money, we were asked if we wanted to be on Japanese TV, so here we are being interviewed. A friend in Japan said it was a popular Tokyo TV show. The people who interviewed us said it would air Monday at 7pm (I think? Maybe it was 6:00), but we didn't try to watch it. I'm afraid they just made fun of us the whole time. I'm a pretty good sport about that kind of thing, but I don't want to see it. :heee:
We grabbed Suica cards and a round-trip ticket for the Narita express. Here's a tip about the NEX - we went to Shibuya station, but wanted to return from Tokyo station. That was totally okay to do and instead of an actual return ticket, we were given a voucher for Narita Express in the Tokyo Metro area, so you can just exchange it for tickets at whatever station you'll use for your return. It was significantly cheaper to purchase round trip tickets than two one-way tickets.
We hopped right on the train there and rode a little over an hour to Shibuya station. We had the unfortunate timing to land in Shibuya Station during Friday night rush hour. It wouldn't have been a big deal later in the trip - but my eyes must have popped out of my head trying to navigate Shibuya station with that many people, hauling our luggage behind us.
We found the right exit, and thanks to GREAT instructions from our Air BnB host, we had no trouble finding our apartment. We dropped our luggage off and then headed back out because we had reservations for an all you can drink sake market.
Here's a link to the AirBNB we used in Shibuya - we LOVED this location. It was a quick walk to anything we could have wanted and about 5 mins to the station. It was a small apartment, but it was perfect for 2 people.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/29036165?source_impression_id=p3_1574963847_2XVWayrM08eyz9CD
Kurand Sake Market was awesome. If I could do it again, I would have reserved it for a different night because we were tired from the trip and I think I would have enjoyed it more after being in Japan for a few days and learning a bit more about sake. BUT! We had a blast there anyway. We pre-reserved and pre-paid for our seats. You can bring in your own food, so we stopped by a Family Mart and grabbed some egg salad sandwich, onigiri, chips, and a blueberry/whipped cream sandwich.
Once they seat you, you can have up to three glasses of sake in front of you at a time and you just walk up to the coolers with about 100 varieties and pour your own sake. You can have as much as you want! When we were there, the place was packed and it looked like a popular place to go after work. Groups of friends were meeting there and they would all bring some food item and then share with their friends.
You can kind of see here how it works with the coolers of sake and then the table in front of the coolers are for pouring your sake. They have a variety of glasses and our package came with some souvenir sake cups that we show in the video above.
We stayed a couple of hours and then stopped by a cute little bar across from our apartment. We became friends with the owner, Akira, who didn't speak English. It's really amazing how you find ways to communicate, though. Between charades and Google Translate, we had a great time talking with him and we went 4 or 5 times while we were in Tokyo. He gave us a CD with his favorite Japanese hip hop, and we gave him a CD of Chris's music and some of our friends who perform Hip Hop. We have some other pictures from Akira's bar that I'll share later but I did take a picture of his English drink menu that night. He had other drinks and even food available, but it was all in Japanese. He offered us other things than are on the English menu, though, so I'm certain that if we knew what was available he would have served us anything we wanted.
When we became friends (and follow each other on IG now even though we don't speak the same language ❤ ) he stopped charging us the cover charge.
Music ended up being a common theme for us - every time we made friends in Japan it started with connecting over music.
A few highballs later, and we stumbled across the street to our apartment where we promptly fell asleep.
Stay Tuned for Day 2!
Last edited: