Japan Trip Day 1-2 : TOKYO

Day 1: Saturday, 29 March 2014 – TOKYO Day 1

Itinerary :       Hanami at Chidorigafuchi and Kitanomaru no Koen

                      Hanami at Yoshino Baigo Ume Matsuri

                      Ginza

The previous night, we arrived at Haneda at 11.30 PM so we had to take taxi because train service had already shut off. The driver couldn’t speak English (as expected) but we had prepared the hotel and address name in both Romanji (our common letters) and Japanese letters (katakana + kanji). The driver didn’t recognize it but he easily switched-on his GPS and hoopla! We were fascinated by the quietness of Tokyo’s road. We knew that Kamata (area near Haneda) was not the city center, but we expected it to be noisy just like many roads in suburbs of Jakarta. In Kamata, there were not many cars and the drivers weren’t noisy; no beeps at all! We arrived safely at our hotel (Grand Park Hotel Panex Tokyo) for less than an hour and paid for about JPY 3000.

Check-in process was fast (hotel was already fully paid via Agoda) and we were told to go up to our room using the elevator. No bell boy (of course, it was a budget hotel) but we didn’t need one. The room was warm compared to the chilly air outside. Too warm for me who was 3 months pregnant at that time; I didn’t sleep very well but hubby looked fine. AC was centralized so I couldn’t do anything to lower the temperature. The bed I ordered was semi-double (I thought it would be fine since the weather would be cold, but hell I was wrong. I felt sweaty!) and the room was also small (small indoor bathroom + TV console + wardrobe) just like budget hotel rooms in HK. However, the room was clean and quite comfortable. Receptionists were quite helpful but most of them couldn't speak English. They tried their best to explain the direction when asked about kombini (convenient store aka minimart) and other places.

We woke up at 8.30. Considering our usual schedule, it was late. But hey, I slept at 3 AM (to overcome insomnia, I played Candy Crush and passed the level that had been stuck for about 2 months! Yeaayy!). We hurried to take a bath and then we went for a cheap breakfast at a minimart in Kamata Station (just 5-minutes-walk from the hotel, what a convenience) since we had decided that we wouldn’t splurge in such expensive city. We bought a packed-2-onigiris with chicken karaage and boiled egg. It was less than JPY500. By that time, the pattern has formed: hubby would take care of the money and I'd take care of the communication.

Our next mission is to obtain train tickets! Ooh, felt like we were in Amazing Race (hyperbolic, I know, but everything was so new and the language barrier was a bit scary). We had learned the train system, schedule, and how to use ticket vending machines from japan-guide.com and Hyperdia. We bought two Shinkansen tickets to Hiroshima at Midori no Madoguchi (JPY 37,500 for two) for Monday and two one-trip tickets to Kanda Station, one of the biggest stations in Tokyo. We immediately went to Kanda, and there we bought our Suica cards. Suica cards are sold only at several places (airports and large stations). You can learn about prepaid IC cards in Japan here.

Using our Suica, we used JR train to go to Kitanomaru no Koen and Chidorigafuchi. Chidorigafuchi is a big cemetery complex filled with many sakura trees. It wasn’t globally famous for hanami as Yasukuni Jinja or other big parks like Ueno or Rikugien, but I purposefully searched for a place that wasn’t too crowded. Getting out of the station, we followed the families with old grannies and small children walking at the same direction. It seemed that even though the sakura in Tokyo hadn’t reached mankai (full-bloom), Japanese families want to utilize their spring weekend to the fullest. To be noted: Tokyo’s children are ALL cute!!! *rubbing stomach wishing for a healthy cute kid*

At Kitanomaru no Koen

Sakura to aoi sora

Tired of walking around, we decided to get a lunch. We found a small ramen store near Nakano Station. Oh, the joy of finding cheap yet delicious ramen in Japan! The noodle is chewy; the soup is a bit too salty but it was savory. We paid JPY 1000 for 2 bowls of ramen. We observed that most of Japanese restaurants provide a jar of cold water in every table and it was free. We didn’t take it for granted; we gulped half a jar! Hahaha haus apa rakuuss...

The waitress tried really hard to explain the menu to us!

No time to take a better-looking pic, it smelled too good!!!

We continued our train journey to Hinatawada Station. It’s located quite far at the suburb; my husband thought that I kidnapped him, haha! The station doesn’t have many Romanji signage like big stations. We simply follow the crowds walking in the same direction until we found a large directions board telling us where to go. Ume Matsuri! It was located about 1 KM from the station (if I’m not mistaken and if my sense of distance had got better haha).

Even outside the koen (garden), some ume (plum) trees bloomed beautifully. We paid JPY400 for 2 entrance tickets and got postcards. The garden is bigger than I expected! Too bad I didn’t feel too well due to my pregnancy, so after a while I took a rest and let my husband walked deeper inside the garden. We took beautiful pics but the real scene was God-sent. Beyond beautiful! I read somewhere that the ume matsuri in 2014 would be the last one for the next 8-10 years because the trees got virus or something and the garden need to be regrown. How sad! We felt so lucky to be able to go there.

with hubby and baby L in my tummy at Yoshino Baigo

Colorful ume (plum) blossoms

The view of Ume blossoms from up the hill

We spend so much time walking that we got thirsty easily; our bottle of water had replenished. There were many canned and bottled beverages vending machines but most of them were empty! Other people got thirsty, too. I suggest you to bring your own beverage when you go to public areas and tourist attractions if you don’t want to spend much money. Beverages in Japan cost about 2-3 times more expensive than in Jakarta.

I got too tired to try to go to Yoshikawa Eiji Museum as I planned so we walked back to Hinatawada Station. I was a bit disappointed since I really like novels Musashi and Taiko, and I was a bit curious about the museum, but well… there’ll always be next time!

We continued our long journey back to the city and decided to go to Ginza. We stopped at Yurakucho Station and had our dinner at Yoshinoya. We had a shake package each for JPY 430. It consisted of a bowl of delicious fluffy white rice, soup, yakiniku and grilled fish. I think it was much more delicious than Indonesia Yoshinoya’s menu, with better value for money.

The weather started to get cooler as the sun set. We found a department store with Uniqlo in it so we got inside to look around. We heard Ginza had the first and biggest Uniqlo store, so we kinda disappointed because the items were not even better than its Indonesian counterpart. I just bought a blouse and hubby nothing. Later we finally realized that the Uniqlo store we visited is just a branch and not the largest store people talked about! Silly us! We decided that we would look for the store in the next day.

We stopped by a minimart near our hotel to buy breakfast and a clear umbrella (just like the ones we saw in doramas! LOL). We spent total about JPY 1000. After we got back to our room, we took a bath, browsed the internet a little to find more info for our next day’s itinerary, and went to sleep. The room was still too warm for me that I had to open the window a little to let some fresh cold air get in. I got better sleep than the night before.

Day 2: Sunday, 30 March 2014 – Tokyo Day 2

Itinerary:      National Museum of Nature and Science at Ueno no Koen

                    Kitkat Store at Seibu Department Store

                    Uniqlo Ginza

                    Tokyo Metro Government Office at Shinjuku

We got up at 8 AM, took a bath, and ate bento we bought the night before at the minimart. It is filled with white rice, croquette, karaage, and a kind of otak2 (fish cakes).

We went to Ueno directly from Kamata Station via Keihin-Tohoku JR Line. It was a cloudy morning and when we arrived at the Ueno no Koen, small rain started to pour. Thankfully we had seen the weather forecast (I can say that more than 90% of Japan weather forecasts are correct, and they make it hourly!) and bought an umbrella the day before. Some families took their children and even brought strollers with weather covers. I was quite amazed, since in Jakarta, if we took our children outside in windy weather (not to say rainy) – even if use stroller’s cover or umbrellas – people will fret! Ha! However, we must note that the air in Tokyo is much cleaner than Jakarta.

There are many interesting big museums in Ueno Garden. Here is Ueno no Koen’s main attraction according to JapanGuide. I think I’ll need a week to explore them all but we had limited time so we had to choose one so we chose National Museum of Nature and Science. Entrance ticket costs JPY 600. Not expensive for such a big collection. My morning sick made me have to sit down and got rest several times. Poor hubby. He was being so considerate and thoughtful during this slow-paced trip. We used to be able to have a long fast-paced walk in our previous trips.

One non-queasy moment so we can take pics

When we got out of the museum, it was still rainy and very windy. Oh well, rain in Tokyo somehow was more romantic than in Jakarta (no flood and minimum pool on the street). The wind tortured us more than the rain. We decided to have a lunch at nearest restaurant which is located at the front of Ueno no Koen. If the rain stopped after we finished eating, we would continue our hanami at Ueno no Koen. It was a rather small yet cozy resto. We got in queue line, and thankfully it was quite a long queue! Why? Because I needed time to read the menu (it was all in katakana and I'm not that good in it)! Hahaha I read it all one by one to my husband reeeaally slowly. But hubby said that he’d be clueless if I wasn’t there, since he couldn’t reach any Japanese letter. We ordered spaghetti Bolognese, beef curry, chamomile tea, and orange juice. They were all good.

The rain hadn’t stopped when we finished our lunch so we cancelled our hanami plan (apa asiknya liat bunga sambil ujan-ujanan, ntar masuk angin). We went to Kitkat Store at Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro. Walked around and around and found nothing, we had to ask the information service for the whereabouts of the store. Turned out that Seibu provided a building story for selling condiments and Kitkat store was located at the corner. Arrrggh, we had to passed so many cute Japanese condiments stall (tahan diriii). Thankfully they were so expensive and we were cheapskates hahaha! We bought some special Kitkat chocs (green tea with sakura, cream cheese, and chilli) for souvenirs.

The queue

Some of the special edition Kitkat

We continued our journey (still raining outside) to Ginza. Ginza’s road was closed for vehicles on Sundays so we could walked in the middle of the street and took some pics. Car free day ala Ginza mah bikin pengen prewed lagi deh hahaha… And FINALLY we found the location of Uniqlo building! Shopping spree!!! We bought some clothes, sandal, etc.

syuting video clip, cyiiinn?

We got back to our hotel to drop our luggage, packed our stuff (since we would depart early in the morning at the next day), took a bath and rested a while. The burden of walking around for 2 days had finally assaulted our legs. We got out of our hotel again at 6 PM to have dinner then go to TMGO. There was an izakaya (traditional resto) near our hotel whose name we couldn’t even spell. We knew that it would be quite hard to communicate with the staffs. However, we really wanted to try an authentic izakaya once in a while. We got in, welcomed cheerfully and politely, took off our shoes. Dan kerempongan dimulai!

The staffs couldn’t speak English, not even a word. It was quite laughable. I chose the first word from the server’s mouth that I could muster: ‘ika’. Cumi. I pointed a picture of fish on the menu. We asked for gohan (nasi) and atsui ocha (teh panas). And while we waited, we explored our table excitedly. Turned out that the specialty of the resto is clams. Too bad we didn’t realize it. But our order arrived, a fresh squid! The server prepared it directly on our table, cut it and grilled it. She pointed to sauce and told us to dip the squid in it. It was good. How about the rice and miso soup? Superb!! The best miso soup we ever tasted. It got seaweed too. Nyuummm! We paid JPY 2000 for all the dishes (not too expensive, I think) and thanked them profusely for taking care of us. It must be hard to communicate with non-Japanese customers.

We used train to go to Shinjuku Station and walked quite a long way via underground to TMGO. The underground passage was filled with homeless men. It was sad seeing them. They look healthy, clean, and intelligent (some of them were reading books) compared to homeless people in Jakarta.

At the north tower, we queue to get into the elevator that will bring us up to the observation deck for free *wajib digaris bawah*. The city view was okay (from 202 meter high), but it was rainy and the deck was covered with window glasses so we couldn’t get a decent pic. The journey in the elevator kinda made me feel claustrophobic (it was new and started when I got pregnant, weird huh?).

Rain & indoor light made it impossible to get a clear pic

On the way back, hubby was reluctant to walk via underground again, so we took the longer way. It was also a good chance to see the business district at night (dark and empty, of course). I was so tired and the air was so windy but my piercing gaze had no effect to my husband (who was excitedly stopping and taking pics of everything LOL). He begged me to go to one more place since it was very near to the station: BIC Camera. I thought that he would buy me a new lens for my Sony camera, but instead, he was looking for a wristwatch. Haahaa geer aja siihh… He didn’t find one that he wanted so we got back to the hotel and took some rest.

 

NOTE:

There was a place that we didn't visit and I still regret it: Ghibli Museum! We didn't find any Lawson store so we couldn't buy the ticket and I didn't want to fuss too much about it, since our time in Tokyo was very short and I already made our pace slower. Nevermind, we'll go next time with our children! 

Other things in Tokyo I'd like to try:
1. Disneysea.
2. Trying its culinary like FUGU (puffer fish) at Torafugutei Kamata, Yurakucho gadoshita dining (didn't find it last time), Hidakaya ramen, Yakitori at Iseya Sohonten Izakaya. Eating sashimi at Tsujiki fish market (maybe). Hahaha... I'm not really interested to do it, since it demands us to wake up very early and queue for quite a long time.
3. Going around Hamamatsucho (blowing bubbles at Hamarikyu Garden, water bus ride on Sumida River).
4. Getting around Ueno Garden more!
5. See the weeping sakura at Rikugien, hanami at Megurogawa.
6. Ikebukuro Sunshine 60 Observatory Deck (outdoor). Sayang mihil masuknya JPY 620.