My First Stay In Tokyo Japan

My First Stay In Tokyo Japan

After my time in Komodo, Bali and Jakarta, I spent my final week of my month long Asia trip in Japan. Although I’ve connected through Tokyo before with daytime layovers like the time I visited Narita, this would be the first time I actually stay for an extended period of time involving overnights in Japan.

Japan’s Transit System

First few days were in Tokyo where I had to navigate the huge and sometimes complicated but efficient transit system. I had already preloaded a digital Suica card in my iPhone and it worked like a charm going through transit station turnstiles right from the Haneda airport where I landed. However, I quickly found out that I definitely needed my Google Maps plus ChatGPT to help me get through the different transfers required at different stations which were not marked as well as I would have liked. Quite often I didn’t see enough English on the signs and the underground stations are huge with multiple exits but eventually I would always get to my destinations.

Stations and trains were also very crowded especially during peak hours but strangely enough, locals are extremely orderly. It was quite eerie to experience a rush hour train packed like sardines with locals with everyone looking at their cellphones and nobody was talking. It was dead silence on the trains despite so many people on board. That’s just part of the Japanese culture.

I knew in advance that I had to use transit and lots of walking to get around Tokyo since Ubers and taxis are horrendously expensive in Japan. But I used the local transit every day and it got me where I needed to go although compared to other countries, I must say that Japan’s transit system is not the most user friendly one for foreigners who cannot read Japanese.

Speaking of crowds, I did walk across the Shibuyu Scramble Crossing a few times which is the world’s busiest intersection. At peak hours 3,000 people would be crossing here.

Modern And Clean

One interesting thing about Japan is that there are very few trash bins in the cities. Locals usually carry their trash home and nobody litters so the result is that Japanese cities are extremely clean. Unlike many other big cities around the world, I didn’t see trash, homeless people nor drug addicts on the streets. People are walking around at all hours so I felt completely safe even walking around at night.

Many buildings are modern and at nighttime main streets are lit up with lots of colourful neon signs. Even billboards (some ven in 3D) are electronic visual shows like the ones I caught on video. However with so many signs lit up at night, the city can appear quite overwhelming too.

For folks who like high tech, Japan will not disappoint. From the 3D electronic billboards to robot restaurants to entire districts filled with electronic stores and super fast bullet trains, Japan takes high tech to a new level. The 3D cat in Shinjuku is so darn cute, I just had to watch every scene!

I visited three different Teamlabs which are high tech audio visual art exhibitions and they were so impressive that I had to dedicate a separate video just to cover them. Teamlab Planets and Teamlab Borderless are both in Tokyo. I made sure I got my advance ticket for early mornings to beat the crowds. Although both are worth visiting in my opinion, I liked Team Borderless more but there was a third venue in Kyoto called Teamlab Biovortex which was even better. I decided to put video footage from all three of these Teamlabs into one single video since many tourists want to know how each one compares with each other.

If you are into high tech and art, visiting a Teamlab is a must if travelling to Japan. Just don’t go if intoxicated since the visuals there can be so overwhelming, you might be in for a trip that’s way beyond what you can handle!

Mix In Old Culture And Nature

Japan also does a decent job of mixing in old culture and nature with all the modern new elements of the cities. There are still beautiful old temples like Sensoji Temple which is gorgeous when lit up at night along with beautiful gardens like at the Imperial Palace and Ueno Park. The old is a nice welcome contrast to the high tech.

Japanese Food Culture

I had a feeling that the Japanese food culture would be really good and my eating experience there proved me right. Meals were not that expensive either at least for me since I ate at small street eateries and even bought precooked meals at local 7/11 stores which took convenience retail to a completely new higher level compared to your typical convenience store anywhere else in the world. Although not as cheap as in southeast Asia like Indonesia or Vietnam, the food in Japan was relatively healthy as long as I limited the fried foods. Later on I journeyed to Osaka which is the food kitchen of Japan.

Wacky Japanese Culture

There are some quirks about Japanese culture that makes it kind of wacky as well as fun. Bigger cities in Japan have animal cafes which are venues where you can have refreshments while enjoying the company of small animals like cats and dogs. These animal cafes gave locals an outlet to spend time with animals since many people don’t have enough home space for pets. The animal cafe scene has since expanded to other types of creatures and I got to visit two different venues in Tokyo which also deserve their own videos.

The first animal cafe I visited was Cafe Capyba where I met two capybara brothers, Mijo and Pecan. Capybaras are from South America but these two brothers were born in Japan and they were much larger in real life than what I previously saw on wildlife videos of capybaras. Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world and I was surprised just how chill they were.

The other animal cafe I went to was Owl Cafe Akiba Fukurou which had 40 owls. These owls came in different sizes and shapes and much like with the capybaras, they were also very chill just content to sit on their perches. The cafe owners even selected an owl to hang out with each individual guest and mine was a fellow named Zebra. Even though the photo above shows Zebra sitting on my shoulder, the video below will show that he didn’t stay there for long as he preferred to sit on my head!

Another wacky part of Japanese culture is the emergence of maid cafes. These are like restaurants staffed with cute pretty Japanese girls dressed in maid uniforms but they act like fairies from kids shows or anime. It’s almost like spending an hour with a live cartoon character. There’s nothing sexual about these maid cafe visits as there are just pure fun and customers are both male and female.

Overall Impression Of Tokyo

Tokyo is huge. There’s a lot to see and do there and the few days I spent in this giant city were definitely not enough to see everything I wanted to see. You just cannot get bored in Tokyo as any downtime back in my hotel were just much needed breathers to rest in between outings to different parts of the city. I really can’t say this about some of the other destinations I’ve been to where I sometimes felt there wasn’t enough to see and do.

The next location in Japan was already booked so I had to go to Tokyo station to board the Shinkansen bullet train which runs at around 285 kilometres per hour to Kyoto. I’ve been on such fast trains before in Germany and Switzerland but these ones in Japan seemed to give a smoother ride.