Tokyo and Kyoto: Arriving to Japan
Hello from Japan! It’s November 2024 and Philippa and I are here to celebrate our 30th birthdays (or more accurately, we’re on a plane somewhere over northern Canada as I start to write this). We’re spending a week between Tokyo and Kyoto, with plans to take the bullet train between the two.
In preparation for the trip, I’ve been reading Emergent Tokyo, a book detailing the development of Tokyo during the 20th and 21st centuries into the massive metropolis it is today. A number of the points in the book would apply equally well to Western cities, particularly the focus on building small dense structures and loosely organized commercial development rather than a top-down/ managed approach.
Purely by coincidence, we’ve traveling in November which is the second tourist season in Japan, as fall foliage erupts (with the first being springtime cherry blossoms). This made booking hotels somewhat more expensive, but the breadth of lodging in Tokyo and Kyoto meant that there were still countless options available.
Other than hotels, preparation has included booking our fancy/ splurge meals, SIM cards through Airalo, and scheduling walking tours of Shinjuku/ Golden Gai and the Imperial Palace. Regarding reservations and finding restaurants, Tabelog is well-regarded for this, although due to cultural differences virtually no restaurant is ranked more than 3.5/5 stars.
The flight from DCA to YYZ was a quick one hour, with a significantly longer fourteen hour flight from YYZ to NRT. Customs and immigration at Narita Airport took nearly an hour, as the process involved both a long line and filling out two long forms electronically—one for customs and one for immigration. Thankfully, public transit extends out to Narita Airport and we were able to take the Skyliner train from Narita Airport into the heart of Tokyo. As an American, it’s refreshing to find that public transit readily takes travelers to and from the airport. Exiting the train was somewhat complicated, as it required using both a Skyliner ticket (purchased separately, at Narita Airport) and an IC card (which we had set up via Apple Wallet prior to leaving the US).
Once in the Shinjuku area, we stopped for a quick dinner (with iced green tea served free alongside the meal in place of water) and checked in to our hotel.
Our first full day in Tokyo started early! We took a taxi to Toyosu fish market to be there by 5:30am in time for a tour of the morning tuna auction. It was a little hard to make out where all the tuna was from, but the auction involved both fresh and frozen (at -60C!) tuna with a helpful sign in the tour area indicating fisheries essentially around the entire world. The entire market is built on an artificial island from reclaimed land in the Tokyo Bay. Following the tour, we stopped by a nearby restaurant for a sushi breakfast—there’s a number of such restaurants at the market that close by lunchtime, catering to the morning tourist crowd.
The remainder of our first full day involved sightseeing in Shinjuku and Shibuya, including the famed Shibuya crossing. It’s a spectacle to see everyone crossing, although as it turns out, a crowded intersection isn’t the most exciting thing to see in Tokyo! Starting in Shinjuku, we slowly moved south, past the Meiji Jingu shrine and towards Harajuku street to see the variety of capsule stores (think toys in plastic capsules in coin-operated vending machines, similar to a gumball dispenser) and crepe shops. My favorite neighborhood, Daikanyama, is a smaller neighborhood slightly south of Shibuya and is home to some excellent beer (Spring Valley Brewery) and Karf, outstanding, if expensive, furniture shop. That evening, we returned to Shinjuku for a free walking tour of Shinjuku and the izakaya of Golden Goi, Omoide Yokocho, and Kabukicho.
On day two, we spent some time shopping around Shinjuku, seeing the department stores built on top of Shinjuku station. Nearby, the view from Tokyo Metropolitan Government building was incredible, particularly in the late afternoon. A grand piano is in the center of the viewing area, open for anyone from the public to play; the accompanying classical music made sight-seeing all the more beautiful. We returned to our hotel for an early night, getting ready for the train ride to Kyoto the next day.
Other Observations
- Everything is built vertically in Tokyo. Not just the buildings, but also car parks (including a lazy susan-esque device to spin cars around as the enter/leave the elevator for the parking garage) and refrigerators (the Toyosu fruit and vegetable market has a refrigerated storage area with elevators for storing/retrieving produce)
- Many restaurants occupy multiple locations. Understandable, when each one is only a few seats. Sometimes the other restaurant is across the street (as with Bar Trench and its annex) and sometimes across the city
- Private rail companies complicate subway rides. Transfers between lines can require swiping out and back in an IC card, and occasionally an entirely separate paper ticket, as in the case of the Skyliner train from Narita
- Everything is individually wrapped in plastic
- Being a vegetarian in Japan is hard! A very seafood-centric cuisine, as well as small restaurants that often only have 4-5 dishes on their menu. But the fish is so good that it’s worth trying regardless of one’s normal dietary restrictions
- Great breakfasts at 7 Eleven stores (Melonpan and maple syrup pancakes highly recommended, as well as the onogiri)