5th August 2019

Booked flights to leave Tokyo on the 7th August, flying to South Korea. Mostly due to the fact it’s the cheapest place to fly to after Japan. And also booked tickets from South Korea to Taiwan on the 16th.

Harry and I felt our first earthquake today! Never felt one before and this was quite big, 6.2 on the Richtor scale. Apparently a standard event for the people of Japan.

Today we decided was the day to find an all-you-can eat sushi restaurant! I should probably have learnt to avoid all you can eats after last time, however, the sound of unlimited sushi was a deal not to be missed.

We googled some restaurants, many costing around 5000 Yen for the all you can eat. One was only 4000 as it was for up and coming trainee sushi chefs. So we thought that would be the one to choose. Supposed to have bookings 2 days in advance, and the website stops you booking, luckily Google have their own booking feature and going through that allowed us to book a table the table day.

We went to the Kangurazaka Sushi Academy. Fortunately, they accepted our sketchy Google booking, so we sat down. They had a small buffet on the side with some meats, dessert, and some other little sides.

The sushi was to order, so the waiter gives each table an iPad and you can order up to 10 pieces of sushi per person. Harry and I ordered 20 with the plan of trying everything on the menu, and the selection was huge. About 3 pages pages of sushi choices each page having about 30 odd dishes.

The first order was unsuccessful, we didn’t realise all of them come pre ordered with wasabi, unless you are able to read Japanese and select them without, and with a 200 Yen charge if you leave a piece of sushi Harry had a strop.

A lot of the menu was in English, but parts were only Japanese, so we decided we’d select a few of these options. We ended up ordering drinks, which of course weren’t free with the meal, but had an optional extra of unlimited drinks, costing only like 2000 Yen more. Exactly what we’d been looking for previous nights, but unlimited food and drink together is a dangerous game. But we decided to play. And as we’d lost about 30 minutes of drinking time (you only get 90 minutes per sitting) we ordered our drinks as quickly as we could, while simultaneously trying to taste every dish of sushi.

And I loved it, fully in my element! I got through most of the sushi, a beer, sake, red wine, and some whisky.

Was a good day.

6th August

Today we re-attampted to visit the Imperial Gardens. Last week we went and the guard sent us away saying it was closed, no explanation, barely any English actually. So we assumed it was a one off maintenance of the park kind of thing. We were wrong. Turns out it’s a Monday thing, and guess what. Today was Monday once again. So we walked in the scorching heat to this park, my t shirt had changed a different colour from the amount of sweat, and all to just be rejected once again. We sat on the curb in the shade for about 30 minutes before heading towards another public temple.

This was the Hie temple.

It had a cool little walkway under some picturesque stairway.

After this we were drained, the heat was a bit too much, so got the metro home and went for a long cold shower.

2nd August 2019
Tokyo

News report – 11 dead and 5,600 hospitalised due to heatwaves

Harry and I decided to dedicate the entire day to a rest day, which was delightful.

In the evening, we went to the shop in the evening for some beverage and found the sake, the all famous cheap Japanese rice wine. I purchased 1.8l for 200 Yen (£1.50), and it’s 35%. This stuff is crazy cheap, and also tastes vile. Coke was necessary to drown the sake flavour🥴.

We had read about these nomihoudai bars (meaning all you can drink), and how popular they were. So googled some nearby and found very positive reviews, so after a fair few glasses of sake we tried to find this unmissable deal.

The first supposedly all you can drink bar was busy, but when we asked the waiter using google translate, he was overly passionate that they didn’t do that, he was so passionate about it which made it unusual. I assume there’s a back story as to why it’s not a thing but our lack of Japanese made it difficult to ask.

After a second unsuccessful attempt to find the nomihoudai bars we had about half of the sake left and then went out for a little bar crawl. We tried to speak to the local Japanese all night with great difficulty, bizarre how bad they are at speaking English. At the end of the night we were bought a meal from the people we’d met.

3rd August 2019
Harajuku

Headed to Harajuku today, we first visited the market which was so crowded, one of the busiest places we’d seen in Tokyo! Partially due to the narrow streets, but still…

We did a little shopping, ate some good food (a large kebab for me), did some pokemon hunting, and Japan is definitely the place for it! Then headed to a pig cafe Harry wanted to go to.

After a short train journey towards Meguro City, we arrived at the Mipigs Cafe, and it really is what it sounds like.

Unfortunately we needed a reservation 2 weeks in advance, so only saw the first pig and then we headed home.

31st July 2019
Tokyo

Started the day early, meeting up with Jenny, Jamie and Phoenix at the train station as they were showing us another part of Tokyo today.

We took the monorail (which had some amazing views) towards a shopping mall, where we saw a giant robot.

The weather was crazy hot today so it was difficult to stay outside – a report of 11 people dying and 5,600 sent to hospital from the heatwave.

We went for a little shop, the Japanese have a cool style however, being Tokyo, everything was more expensive than we were willing to pay.

For lunch, Jenny offered to buy us an all-you-can eat buffet. And, I think I got a bit too excited…

I ate 6 main meals and at least 4 desserts, and about 10 minutes after I stopped eating I thought I was going to explode. I struggled to breathe I was so full! We walked around for a bit after, while I was trying to hide my pain, and eventually headed back to the train station at around 5pm to go back to the apartment where Harry and I crashed from our food coma.

1st August 2019
Tokyo

Today, we went to Shibuya City, we first saw the temple Hozomon gate which was a very touristy area but free to get in.

There was a fortune stall near the entrance, so Harry and I gave it a go. There was good and bad, luckily we both had good fortunes.

Later on as it was getting dark, we went to the Shibuya crossing as we’d heard good things. It’s basically 10 massive crossings all really close to each other, so when the light goes green to cross, it goes crazy busy.

Also made a little purchase which made up for not spending anything the last few days…..

Had a chill few days as Tokyo can get incredibly hot in the day. Yesterday, we visited the Government building as it’s free to go to the observatory on the 45th floor and on a clear day you can see Mount Fuji, unfortunately it was a bit too foggy. In the evening, Harry and I went to Shinjuku where the city it lit up.

When we got home I made some spagetti and fried veg with tofu and had some wine for dinner.

Today, we stayed in the apartment until about midday then we headed out to the Lego store to get the boys some Lego. On our way, we visited a pokemon store, but they only had first generation Pokemon

After we went to the shopping centre to find the Lego store, it took about 2 hours (supposed to be a 20 minute walk) as the building was so complicated with about 12 floors. We were going to visit the imperial park afterwards however we were meeting Johnno at 5pm at the standing bar. So we walk part of the way and later found out it closed at 2pm anyway, we assume for maintenance as it’s usually open.

We met Johnno at the standing bar for a quick beer, then headed to his house on the metro. We gave the gifts to the boys, which they loved, and ate a delicious roast dinner from Jenny. Phoenix also made some really nice brownies.

We finished the meal with some rounds of Mario Kart, one of my favourite games, so of course I didn’t losing a race 😉 despite playing Nintendo switch, which is not quite the same as a Wii.

28th July 2019
Tokyo, Japan

Was able to snag myself a free meal on the flight to Tokyo by simply asking the flight attendant if there were any spare preorders :). Always fun to start the morning well.

The Narita Airport is huge, and luckily immigration officers didn’t ask for an onward ticket because I didn’t have one.

Rode an airport limousine (just a bus) to Tokyo City centre where Harry’s cousins, Johnno and Jenny, met us with their two children Phoenix and Jamie. They were so lovely and walked us to our apartment and gave us ideas of things to do. When we got to the apartment Johnno had set up some public transport cards with £25 on, some beers in the fridge and a spare blow up mattress if we wanted to use it, very generous. Jenny also invited us for a roast and Johnno invited us to the pub after work one day which we’re very much looking forward to!

The apartment is perfect, and even better than the one we shared together in France!

However, the toilet and shower is quite complicated. The toilet has a variety of bum cleaning functions, a heated seat, a built in sink and a bunch other buttons that I have no idea what they do.

We went to the supermarket, also confusing when you can’t even guess what an item is cuz it’s all in symbols, one shop even had a robot as the cashier.

Had some pasta for dinner and Harry went to bed early as his knee was hurting. I video called the family and made full use of having wifi again :D.