I never did get around to posting about our trip in October/November. I should do that! I'm going to try and upload an album of some pics for you guys...My wife took over 2000 photos, so I'm summarizing with a few I thought did a good job showing off our time! I think they're about in order of our trip! Click the link below to see photos!
Our trip was from 10/20 - 11/3
Day 1
We flew from Indy to O'Hare. It was my birthday, so that was fun. Took a bus from Narita airport to Tokyo Disneyland Hotel (where we stayed for 2 nights). We hit up Ipskiari to wander and eat some food. And goodness gracious, the curry udon my wife got was out of this world!
Day 2-5
Disney days! We did Tokyo Disneyland the first day, DisneySea the second day, and then a mix of both the next two days. We're HUGE Disney nuts, so this was super fun. Because it was Halloween time, everyone was in costume. And holy shit do they know how to cosplay. Gorgeous outfits everywhere!!! You can look anywhere online and find cool pictures and info about Tokyo Disney, so I won't gush too much. But it's definitely a very unique feeling park compared to Disneyland and Disney World. The merchandise offerings are on-fucking-point. Since we love and collect so much Disney stuff, we were in heaven. And we spent a lot of money. :)
Oh and the food offerings were great. I love churros and had like 4 different flavors. And the Toy Story and Star Wars mochi were delicious. They re-themed Haunted Mansion to Nightmare Before Christmas and it was SO cool!
Overall, this was an incredible set of parks. I legit don't understand why the US doesn't go this insane with cute, color, and theme. The characters were cute as hell, the plush and treats were adorable and fantastic, and just...I don't know. It was awesome. And chocolate crunch is mine and my wife's kryptonite. I NEED MORE. Really. It's expensive on eBay, so I'm trying to figure out how to get more of this shit.
Day 6
Travel to Kyoto! We wandered some street markets and found one of many sweet arcades. I love Jubeat, so I took every opportunity I could to play it. We found our first stationary store and I nearly died. A recurring theme of our trip was finding stationary stores and secondhand stores...I don't remember the NAMES of the stationary and art stores, but they were wonderful. We hit a few in Tokyo, too.
Day 7
We went to Fushimi Inari and Nara. Got up SUPER early to beat the tour busses and got some incredible photos. We took a different route than most of the people were and found a small little house alongside a bunch of bamboo. That was awesome and super chill. Learned how magical the Icoca card is when we took off for Nara. That shit was legit.
Nara was super fun. The deer bowing was cool. We also went to Tōdai-ji Daibutsuden and Kofuku-ji. I just love how much history exists in the middle of everywhere. It's SO humbling to visit from the USA and realize how young this country is. We first had that thought on our trip to Italy last year, but it REALLY sunk in while visiting Japan.
Day 8
We went to Arashiyama and the Monkey Park. This was silly and fun. Absolutely recommend it! Yes, it's a touristy thing to do, but it was a FUN touristy thing. Arashiyama was gorgeous. We will definitely be spending more time here next time we go. The bamboo forest was cool, but the internet made it out to be a MUCH bigger deal than it was. Still crazy to see how tall and dense it was. We did a lot of meandering while here.
Day 9
We went to Higashiyama and did a bunch of exploring. Saw the Golden Pavilion and, well, just a bunch of places I don't remember the name of. We walked to Philosopher's Path which was really serene. We only stopped at one temple on the walk (Eikando) and it was AMAZING. We got some incredible photos here and spent a lot of time just enjoying our surroundings.
Day 10-13
Off to Shinjuku for our stay at Hotel Gracery! A complete 180 in terms of the feel of the trip. Sensory overload time! I combined all of this because it was sort of a blur.
We had some incredible food while exploring. Japanese curry is my favorite thing and I need to find out where I can buy it here in the US. We also had our enjoyed kaitenzushi AND the sushi where you order off the touch screen and it comes to you on a little train. Both were SUPER good and SUPER affordable.
More on food, we had this CRAZY delicious meat experience for lunch one day. Yakiniku! I saved the business card because it was so good. The place was called 焼肉 韓の台所 道玄坂店 and it was located on the 7th floor of the Dougenzaka Center Building. Oh my lord. <3
At some point, I had pancakes that were basically pillows of magic in my mouth. It was in a shopping center and we did a random Yelp search and found it. I also snapped some pics of all the awesome puzzles, models, and Nanoblocks. I'm an avid collector of Nanoblocks, so I had a field day. I "only" spent around $250 total on sets I wanted (the two exclusive Disney sets), but I snapped photos and grabbed a release book to hunt down some other sets I want. My wife and I are big fans of Japanese puzzles (because again, they just seem to make the most adorable an fun puzzles ever). I believe we ended up with 4 by the time it was all said and done.
We found secondhand stores. And holy shit these are so much fun. Japanese people take such good care of their stuff. We scored a few really nice plush my wife was looking for. We also found a place that did latte art. And of course, I had to get a picture of my pup. I feel bad that my wife didn't get a pic of our other dog, but such is life! This was when we were heading to Harajuku, so we got the gigantic cotton candy and went in a bunch of little shops. Really fun place to explore.
Oh and while exploring Tokyo Tower, we ran across a sake tasting. Now we don't LOVE sake, but free sake sounded like a party! So we took part in that. I guess there were some awards going on? I don't know. We got drunk and fun! We got to visit a brewery which is something we always do when we travel (because I love beer). The beer was good! Not as good as a lot of the microbrew stuff here in the states, but it definitely has potential.
I took a picture of the ONLY weird vending machine we saw during the entire trip. And it wasn't even weird...It was just alcohol.
Worth noting that Halloween in Shibuya is insane and PROBABLY not worth your time. It was just crazy amounts of people, shoulder to shoulder, being loud and drunk. It might be the single most crowded thing I've ever been involved in. 2nd place would be Taste of Chicago on the 4th of July years ago (where we literally stood still for 15 minutes in a sea of people because nobody could move).
The last evening we did THE most touristy thing imaginable - Robot Restaurant. And you know what? It was a fucking blast! It was SO ridiculous. There were mostly foreigners here, which is totally to be expected. Our friends suggested we go, and I would suggest anyone who hasn't been to this go as well. It's just dumb fun. I'm not entirely sure what happened during it. But man, combine the loud music, crazy lights, and alcohol and you've got a PARTY.
Day 14
Time to go home. Boo. Wife got her coffee and prepared for the long day of travel. In the middle of the night, they put up this Godzilla display in the lobby, and it was fantastic.
I snapped a pic of SOME of the souvenirs and of my Kit Kat haul. <3
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I could go on and on and on about this trip. But I'll just say that it was, hands down, my favorite vacation to date. We're knocking off international destinations as we continue forward, but we WILL be going back to Japan in the next few years.
