Laundry

Just a quick point if you're packing light or need to do laundry in Japan.

Some hotels will have coin operated laundry but some (including our current Tokyo hotel) do not.

You need to look for (or ask your hotel front desk) where the nearest 'coin laundry'.  Not laundromat or anything else.  Coin laundry.

Some require you to add detergent, some don't - we packed a few travel detergents with us to cover all bases.  Also the dryer probably will not completely dry your clothes- be prepared to hang some things in the bathroom to dry.

Japan 2015, Week 2 - Itinerary

3 weeks of traveling = a ton of planning...especially when you only have just over a month to do all said planning!  We are not really, stressing out about it, though - once we got our plane tickets booked (easy) and found hotels (much more challenging), we were pretty much ready to go!  Planning helps make the waiting go by faster - and we'll be glad we did it in the end.  ☺ Here's the plan for week 2 of our Japanese Adventure!

Japan 2015, Week 1 - Itinerary

I like having a plan when we travel.  Not a rigid, minute-by-minute itinerary, but a solid framework or outline to provide some structure to our days.  It saves us from wandering around, trying to figure out what to do - and there are about 3 million options at any given time in Japan, so, multiply that by 20 days...going without a plan would be somewhat insane.

Tokyo, part 1

おはよ!!!

We are leaving Tokyo and heading to Osaka/Kyoto for a few days so I thought I'd sum up how we've spent our first 3 days in Tokyo.

FRIDAY:
We arrived at our hotel Friday night around 9 PM.  We checked into our hotel and then wandered around Shinjuku a little, got some pasta from the Lawson convenience store under our hotel, and went to bed - we were pretty exhausted!

SATURDAY:

• Walked around Shinjuku a bit before getting the train to Kichjoji (Shinjuku to Mitaka station)
• Walked to the Ghibli Museum - we met a couple of friendly Australian girls on the way

• Explored the Ghibli Museum and watched the current short animated feature, コロの大さんぽ (Koro no Daisanpo) - it was completely in Japanese - with Japanese sub-titles, but the story was simple and cute so we managed to follow along just fine.  We stopped at the gift shop where I got Catbus and Little Totoro keychains and some Totoro stamp sets.

 

• Walked through Inokashira Park - lots of Hanami spots and lovely sakura trees 

• Had lunch at Freshness Burger in Kichijoji before heading back to Shinjuku
• Walked along a lovely path full of Sakura trees and visited the Yasukuni Shrine 
• Wandered around the Roppongi area a bit before taking the subway back to Shinjuku

 SUNDAY:

• Visited the Hanazono Shrine - we didn't find anything about this Shinto shrine in any of our guidebooks, but we could see it from our hotel room so we decided to check it out.  I'm sure we'll see bigger shrines that will make this one seem very uninteresting, but for our first time exploring a shrine, it was pretty cool (we didn't really do much exploring at the Yasukuni Shrine on Saturday - just took a few pictures and took a quick walk through their exhibit of "gifts", I guess.) 

• Walked around the Shinjuku Gyoen which we loved!  This park didn't seem especially interesting when we read about it in our guidebooks, but again, we were VERY pleasantly surprised!  It is a large-ish, quieter park - unlike Inokashira, alcohol is strictly prohibited and tripods ARE allowed so there is a lot less of the "Hanami action".  It is filled with gorgeous sakura trees, ponds, gardens, a tea house, and some lovely wooded and also open spaces.

• Walked around the Ginza area and the Sony store - lots of big-name-brand, expensive stores and fancy things of that sort.  We kept seeing the police blocking roads and white vans with loud speakers, but we don't know what they were saying - it didn't seem especially pleasant, though.
• Took the subway to the Tokyo station to get to the Imperial Palace.  We did lots of walking around the grounds and gardens...and more walking...and more walking…
• Walked back along the street LINED with bookstores of all sorts - and then the street full of music shops (we'll probably check those out again in Tokyo, Part 2.)

MONDAY:

• We loved the Shinjuku Gyoen so much that we went back - still absolutely gorgeous…
• Walked to the Meiji Shrine and wandered around there a bit.
• Had lunch in Harajuku - and braved the SEAS of Japanese teenagers in the Takeshita-Dori.
• Walked to Shibuya and used all 5 crosswalks in Shibuya Crossing, visited the Hachiko statue, and got some stuff at Tokyu Hands.
• After returning to our hotel for a short rest, we went to the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices to get an awesome view of Tokyo.
• We stopped at the arcade for a few rounds of Taiko no Tatsujin and some (mostly failed) attempts at the UFO (claw-grabbing) machines - John did win me a fork-playing Rillakuma with a chocolate-covered strawberry on his head, though.

TUESDAY:

• Checked out of the Best Western Astina Shinjuku - we LOVED this hotel so it was sad!
• Stopped by the massive Kinokuniya bookstore and the Uniqlo/BIC Camera…complex(???) in Shinjuku.
• I  ended up getting a wee bit sick (dehydration, exhaustion) so we decided to get a taxi to the Tokyo Station and make our way to Osaka!!!

I was feeling fine by the end of the day - just needed lots and lots of water - so stay tuned for our adventures in Osaka and Kyoto!

Some of John's initial thoughts on Japan

Since Amy posted while I was sleeping I'll get some in while we rest up quick before heading out to lunch.

1) People who are working take their jobs seriously. I haven't noticed anyone on their cellphones or Facebook or anything. There is always someone walking around and making sure items are stocked and orderly and dusting off things. If their job is to take orders or greet or help the public they stand at their counter or entryway or wherever they are until they need to do their jobs. And no matter what their job is they seem to try their best to do it well..

2) Speaking of dusting in point 1, I haven't noticed dust. There obviously is if it had the chance to sit undisturbed, but everything is so clean....

3) People are aware of their surroundings but mind their own business. Even people we walked by that were obviously out to the bars to get their drink on might be loud and in party mode, but not the kind of frat boy PARTAY obnoxious or we're partying noise and if you're not as loud as us we'll be louder and make sure you know we are drunk..

Ok lunch time.
Part 2.
4). Everyone seems very well dressed. Like not just nice cloths or anything, but like properly up together outfits. Even people you'd expect to not be, like some of the punks, dorky guys, and other random people... It's like if there was a professional photo shoot and they just walked off the set. It's just noticeably perfect.

5) Everyone is always moving but they don't seem to be in a super rush, even when they are. Like people will be running to catch a train or whatever, but if they miss it they just politely wait for the next one.

6) Traffic. Crossing super busy streets is hectic and cars turning will advance right up to the crosswalk but don't threaten to run you over. They just queue up and just wait. Very disconcerting the first few times with a big truck just rolls up on to you while on the road.

7) TV is a weird mix of the Today Show, the gong show, public access, and the Jerry Springer show. Or anime.

8) The architecture is very varied. We have seen buildings shaped like battleships, Jenga, wavy slides, castles, old European buildings.... It's very cool that they aren't boring.

Some of Amy's Initial Thoughts About Tokyo

It's 3 AM in Japan.  I slept about 4 hours, but seem to be wide awake now.  We'll see how long it lasts as I try to write this...

Anyway, I thought I'd record some of the things I've noticed so far in Tokyo - it's only been a little over a day so maybe it'll be interesting to see how my perception changes.

1.  Tokyo is CLEAN, even though there are a gazillion people here and there never seems to be a public garbage can anywhere.  The streets are clean, the subway stations are clean, the sidewalks are clean, our hotel is clean, the green spaces are clean - everything is CLEAN.  It doesn't feel like a sterile sort of clean - it is maybe more like people have respect for their surroundings and who wants to be surrounded by trash?  I'm not sure, but I like it (except when I need to throw something away.)  I also haven't noticed any homeless people - very different from other big cities I've been to.

2.  People in Tokyo are always moving.  When they are not moving themselves, they are being moved by something else like escalators (standing on the LEFT side), trains, or subways.  Even the people just standing around seem to be moving or momentarily waiting to move.  It maybe sounds hectic and overwhelming - and it kind of is - as I mentioned, there are a GAZILLION people here; however...

3.  People in Tokyo are respectful.  The vast crowds of people don't push or shove, they don't randomly stop in front of you then get mad when you run into them, and they seem to be aware of the people and things around them all the time (e.g. even people walking around texting in a crowded train station seem to know exactly where they are).  We noticed that we very often forget that we are very obviously outsiders - we don't get stared at or anything like that.  People do their best to make sure we understand with gestures, using calculators to show us numbers, carefully counting back our change, and other things like that.  We have had people randomly ask us if we need help - and they sound like they genuinely want to help us.  It's nice.

4.  Tokyo feels safe.  While making our way through a SEA of people in the Shinjuku JR Station, it's occurred to both of us that we should feel unsafe, or at least like we should be extra, super careful/aware, but it's a very momentary feeling.  Of course we have common sense and take precautions - we're not stupid.  It's very nice to not feel like...prey, though.

I'll stop here for now.  We are continuing to post photos on Flickr as we have time between our adventures - you can find them here.  We'll add captions as we have time too.  John's been taking tons of videos with our little Flip camera and also several photos with our DSLR camera that we haven't uploaded yet so watch for those.

Tokyo Free Guide (draft)

We are very excited to meet Chikako, our Tokyo Free Guide!  (I'll actually write stuff here at some point)

You can check out their web site here - http://www.tokyofreeguide.com/