Our time in Japan followed our time in Thailand. We arrived in Tokyo on February 2, 2024.
The time difference from Thailand to Japan was only a couple hours, but we were zonked since we had spent ~8 hours flying the day before. (There were no direct flights from Phuket, so we backtracked through Singapore on our favorite airline, Singapore Airlines.) We slept in, which meant that we missed the buffet breakfast at the hotel. I found a Denny’s nearby using Google maps, so we decided to take a walk to explore the area and get an American breakfast. Well, that was the plan, anyway. We had a lovely walk over but once we arrived, we discovered that the breakfast window had closed and they were only serving lunch.
Wait, what? Doesn’t Denny’s serve 24-hour breakfast?! Not in Tokyo! And the lunch options weren’t anything we’d ever seen at an American Denny’s; they were all Asian dishes. To say a few of us were disappointed would be an understatement. To be dreaming of fluffy pancakes and eggs and have to pivot to rice and meat is a pretty big shift. Oh well. To order, we had to navigate a tablet and submit everything without a human. It took us quite a while and there was a lot of Google Translate happening, but we finally picked something to eat.
Then we had to figure out the self-serve drink station. Everything was labeled in Japanese and wasn’t intuitive. We probably looked hilarious with our phones out, scanning the machines. Ha! But we finally figured out how to get water, coffee (critically important for me), iced tea for the girls (since they had it), and hot tea for Chris. Phew! Once the food came and we started to take care of the hangriness, our moods improved. I got a pretty big kick out of the music that was playing: It was a mix of 90s R&B. All-4-One’s “I Swear” came on, as did Boyz II Men’s “On Bended Knee.” Somehow my brain still knew many of the words.
After breakfast we headed off to find the metro so we could go to Tokyo Skytree. We managed to walk right by the entrance; it actually blended in really well. N got upset that we had walked farther than we needed to, LOL. We discovered that the metro was really easy to navigate. I had downloaded the Suica app on my iPhone and loaded money into it. All I had to do was put my phone on the turnstile area and it made the appropriate transaction automatically. Shelby did the same with her phone. Chris has an Android, so he used a physical Suica card that he had bought at the airport the night before. N did the same; she had a kids’ version of the card and paid 50% of the rate, which was awesome.
Everything in the metro was labeled well — each of the different lines and even the cars. And Google would tell you which train cars to get into if you needed to transfer somewhere to make it as efficient as possible. The app was 100% precise with regard to when the trains arrived. I was blown away. Inside the metro I had heard that the ride is very quiet and this was absolutely true. No one talks or listens to their phone without headphones. You could practically hear a pin drop. I’d never experienced anything like it! Somehow, as Americans, our mere presence felt loud.
We arrived at the Tokyo Skytree stop and were able to scan a QR code to buy tickets just outside the metro station. The only downside is that we had to wait a bit for our entry time. We split up to do some exploring; I went off with N, and Chris went off with S. N and I ended up at a cute (and delicious) bakery with a Beatles theme. We couldn’t pick just two items, so we got a few to share and then headed out into the sun to enjoy them. We tried the famous melon pan, which reminded me of conchas in Mexico.
We met back up and headed to the Skytree at our assigned entry time only to discover that this simply put us in a line, LOL. We then had to wait with lots of other tourists to go up the elevator, which we were packed into like sardines. Eek. I’m claustrophobic. Fortunately, it was a quick ride. There are two different levels you can pay for; we opted for the lower of the two, the Tembo Deck, simply because that’s what was available. To do the higher level, we would’ve had to have waited longer and no one was up for that. The views from the Tembo Deck were outstanding and we were lucky to be up there on a pretty clear day.
I hadn’t ever contemplated just how big Tokyo is, but when you see it from up above, you realize that it’s massive. We could spend months exploring the city and never see it all. What’s even more amazing is just how clean and organized it all is. New York could never, LOL. Despite the day being mostly clear, we couldn’t see Mt. Fuji, as there was just enough haze to obscure it. Bummer! But I can’t complain because it was an absolutely amazing experience taking in the whole city. I was in awe and it provided fabulous context for where we were set to spend the next handful of days.
We needed some down time after our afternoon excursion, so we took the metro back to our hotel to relax for a bit. We stopped off at a produce shop before reaching the hotel because the strawberries that were on display looked amazing. There were different packages at varying price points, perhaps signifying particular varieties of strawberries or the regions where they came from. We had no idea and the signs were in Japanese, so we simply picked a couple, as they all looked amazing. We later learned that it was prime strawberry season (I never would’ve guessed that). The strawberries were indeed phenomenal and we went on to buy many more on our trip.
After relaxing for a bit, we were ready for dinner and this is where our first day in Tokyo got really interesting. We headed out walking, figuring we’d simply pick a restaurant to eat at that looked good, as searching on Google was tough with things in Japanese. Well, looking in restaurant windows and trying to make heads or tails of the menus posted there was equally difficult! We had only a vague idea what kind of food they served. Google Translate was…insufficient.
We finally rolled the dice on a hotpot place because we were starving and it was the one thing we could more or less agree on. We stepped inside and were instructed to take our shoes off and put them in a cubby. We were led to a table and sat on the floor, with our feet in a cutout space below. Not surprisingly, the menu was all in Japanese, but it at least had photos, so that plus Google Translate gave us some idea of what the options were, but only just. It still took quite some time to decide what to select and even then we weren’t entirely sure what we had ordered, LOL. Our server spoke very little English. Bless him for trying! He was so patient with us. Anyway, here’s a video recap of our dining experience:
We later learned that the specific hotpot we had ordered was motsunabe (more info here), which specifically uses the internal organs of the animal. We definitely didn’t understand that when we ordered. Other than N, who is fairly adventurous, none of us eats innards, so while I’m sure they added great flavor to the hotpot, we chose not to eat the “beef” itself.
Our dinner ended up being quite the experience and we laughed heartily all throughout, as you can hear in the video. We left with full stomachs and a new appreciation for eating like locals. We had read that it wasn’t necessary to tip servers — and that some might even find it offensive — but we really wanted to show gratitude to our server for being so patient with us, as we struggled to ask questions and learn how to cook our hotpot. So we asked him at the end if he would open to receiving a tip and he said yes. We bowed deeply as we said arigato gozaimasu.
And that was our first day in Tokyo. I’d say it was quite a memorable start!
I love this! The experience of being squished in elevators was a common one for us in Japan - and just super no-nonsense about it, which was kind of hilarious. Skytree was obviously super touristy but seeing the SCALE of Tokyo is MIND BLOWING.