We were in Tokyo for three days and it was a blast.
Kikanbo Ramen is the best ramen I have ever had in my life. Get the pork tonkotsu.
Meiji Shrine is a breath of fresh air and greenery in bustling Tokyo. There’s also a famous lucky well (Kiyomasa Well) in the park. You’re supposed to take a picture of it and make it your phone background. If you do this, you will have good luck for the whole year.
Shinjuku Gyoen Garden was also worth a stroll and had some cherry blossoms, but I wouldn’t say it’s a must-do.
Akihabara:
Akihabara is the perfect showcase of Tokyo nightlife. We enjoyed visiting the large Yodobashi store there. There are floors upon floors of electronics and a lot of other interesting things – it’s a good place to get souvenirs. We also purchased a Japanese SIM card there. If you go to Akihabara at night, you will see Japanese men and women dressed up as maids, urging you to visit their maid cafes… It’s a crazy place. There are also several bookshops and manga shops which are quite interesting. You will also find a gachapon store that has about 400 different types of gachapon.
Owl cafe:
We enjoyed the owl cafe. However, we didn’t do enough research on how they treat their animals. They do rotate the owls so that they only see people for a certain numbers of owls each day, and they are closed for one day a week. The owls did not appear to be in any distress. However, I can imagine that the owls don’t have as good of a life as they could. You can read more about it here:
The owl cafe costs about 20 USD for an hour with the owls, some tea and a souvenir. You have to stop by at 11am when they open to make a reservation for later that day. If you do go to the owl cafe, there’s an amazing hole in the wall okonomiyaki place just a few blocks away. Visiting this restaurant was one of my favorite cultural experiences on our trip. The restaurant owner and customers did not speak any English, and we did not speak any Japanese. All of the menus were in Japanese. The only word which we mutually understood was “okonomiyaki.” Through some hand gestures, we figured out that we needed to pick which meat to put in the okonomiyaki. We used Google Translate to indicate that we wanted beef. The restaurant owner prepared the okonomiyaki for us herself and showed us how to put on toppings. She was so kind.
Tsukiji Market: Definitely a worthwhile and crazy experience! One of the tourist attractions here is the tuna auction, where restaurants will bid over giant tuna to serve to their customers later that day. Unfortunately, this tuna auction happens at 3am, so we opted to skip it. Tuna aren’t that exciting anyway. If you’re going to eat sushi here, I would go with one of the popular places. We ate at a random sushi restaurant, and it wasn’t good. The market has moved locations since I was last in Tokyo, so I don’t know what the new market is like.
Harajuku: In my opinion, this was not worth it. I was hoping to see some crazy fashion, and I did see a few people dressed up, but apparently Harajuku isn’t the place for that anymore. There is a lot of shopping in Harajuku, but the main shopping street was an absolute mess and it was difficult to even enter the street, due to the sheer amount of people.
WanderLiz 