Tokyo: All the Random Things!

What an amazing city. A mix of old and new, super random and weird, and yet so fun!!! Of course, there’s the things that everyone knows...the bright lights, busy crossings, and famous temples. But there is so much more to Tokyo, and it’s definitely a place we would go back to.

We arrived late at night and opted to stay near the airport, so our adventure began on the outskirts of Tokyo navigating our way into central area dragging our huge suitcase and backpacks. Side note, can’t wait till we don’t have to bring a crib and portable high chair (necessity here) for Cora...they take up half the suitcase! After stashing most of our luggage in a locker in a train station, we made our way to the .... temple. Immediately, we were overwhelmed by tourists, and realized shrines were probably not going to be our thing on this trip. Beautiful to admire from the outside but we were not going to be touring around them!

 

We did a lot of walking and wandering between places, always a great way to see a city and allowed us to see some areas that were more local which was nice. Our hotel was close to Akihabara, which is the anime center of Tokyo. Such a fun area to walk around day and night. We checked out a Sega arcade which was 6 floors games....claw games, video games, and arcade games. And it was packed with locals. We tried a few music games but we were no where near was expert level as the regulars!

 

 


The following day we stayed out all day; the girls were troopers napping on the go all week and not getting as much sleep as normal! We started at Meiji Jingu shrine and stumbled upon a ceremony for the World Sumo Wrestling champions happening. It’s a bit of a touchy story about why we weren’t  closer to see them, but we still did see them, so we will leave it at that. Ha!

  

Next we went to Harajuku, which is known for rainbow everything (fitting candy, grilled cheese, crepes, etc) and funky fashion. It’s become very touristy so after waiting in a 20 min line for giant cotton candy, we decided to walk. Btw, girls think the cotton candy was definitely worth it!

 


A lot of the random things in Tokyo (like the arcade) seem to be for locals, not just tourists. Karaoke is big, with private rooms for groups rather than having to sing in front of everyone. I knew we had to do this, but, since it’s often a late night activity, a lot of the places can get pretty gross. When I read about this karaoke place called Rainbow Room on a blog, I knew we had to go. It was perfect, super nice, clean, and cheap during the day! We spent an hour singing songs (really mostly Let It Go) under spinning disco lights and laughing. I think Nick and I had just as much fun as the girls.

 


Continuing on with our random fun afternoon, we went to a purikura store where they had about 10 different machines to choose from. Purikura is basically a photo booth but where you choose options to make your eyes bigger, background color, etc and then can edit the pictures afterward before printing them out. I thought I had read enough blogs about it, but turns out we had no idea what we were doing. All the machines were in Japanese and you only had a set amount of time for each step. In the end we got some funny photos and had lots of laughs along the way. We aren’t sure how this is still a thing given phones and filters/apps but there were tons of locals (girls) in the store with us!

 


Last on our tour of random activities, we visited a hedgehog cafe where you can hold, feed, and pet hedgehogs at tour table for 30 min. Super random and pretty overpriced, but they were cute and Emmeline and Cora both really enjoyed it!

 


Of course, we also visited Shibuya Crossing which was equally impressive both day and night. So many people! But really, everywhere had a lot of people, especially the metro in the evening!

 


And of course, the food. We found a delicious restaurant for lunch that served .... basically a version of a savory pancake cooked on a hot plate in front of us. We sat on the floor and felt like we were experiencing true Japan! Homemade noodles were a hit with everyone, and on our last night we ate at a little tiny yakitori shop (more like a bar) in a little cute alley called “piss alley”.

 

There is so much more of Tokyo left to see. We loved the vibe, how many random experiences you can have, and the people (so nice!) Interestingly, no kids seems to live in Central Tokyo as we couldn’t seem to find a single playground. Next time we will venture a bit farther out and see more local life (we realize more and more this is preferable to hoards of people).