Japan.

Trip Report Summary


Travel Dates	April 29 - May 13
Highlights	Shibazakura at Fuji

Travel Notes

Tokyo

Our flight to Japan felt long. We went from Toronto, to Montreal, to Tokyo. Apart from the fact that we flew over Toronto again to get to Japan, the flight just felt long, and sitting cooped up in a confined space didn't feel as easy as it was years ago. I did end up watching quite a few movies, most of them unmemorable, except the few drama ones with Tom Hanks (A man called Otto and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) and 42 with the late Chadwick Boseman.
We landed in Tokyo and with a bit of some confusion at the airport, we picked up our JR pass and went to town. In hind-sight, we should of picked up the JR pass a day later since we got to Tokyo at 3pm
As an aside, the JR pass is great. It's unfortunate they're increasing the price in October by almost 70%, but the flexibility and ease of use of booking the Shinkansen is just top notch.
We stayed in Asakusa, and I learned about the new chain hotel APA. They have a hotel just about everywhere, and they're the low-key budget hotel; maybe just one step up from a capsule hotel. Suffice to say the majority of our stays were in that chain hotel.
It was refreshing to see while walking around at night that the cost of Japan still was the same back when I lived there; ramen was around ¥1000, snacks could be obtained for 100-300 yen, vending machines were ¥100-150 for a bottle. Coming from Canada, it felt like inflation was hitting everyone, and I was expecting like 15$+ meals for something basic, which is what Toronto is currently hitting.
Tokyo was in a way less eventful for us, as we just ate our way through Tokyo. We walked through most major districts, and saw how Japan loves to line up for things (despite it being 8am on a saturday, I saw some arcades with 150+ people waiting in line to get in!). I don't think we went to any of the major tourist attractions. I do regret not being able to see teamLab at Toyosu, but it was made up by eating multiple meals a day. I was grateful for now having the money to eat almost anything and everything. It felt very different to when I was in Japan with only a 20$ spending budget per day.
- We went to Shinjuku and had Karubi beef Yakiniku. Karubi beef is apparently the new big trend, which is essentially beef short rib
- We went to Takano fruit parlour for a giant parfait. Strawberries were in season and they were fantastic. It's nice to eat fresh fruits
- We wandered through the Northwest side of Asakusa where there was a street called, hoppy street; the street was packed with izakayas just opened up on the street level.
- Went to Tsukiji and ate as the main branch for sushi. Relatively speaking, the sushi was expensive compared to the other meals we ate, and Zoe has to remind me that we pay 100$+ for this meal in Toronto. We walked around at street level, and the place was so packed. It was shoulder to shoulder with other tourists until we got out.
- We waited 10 mins in line to eat a giant melon bun with green tea ice cream in the middle
- We ate at a chinese place that had giant gyoza that was very good value
- We went to Andy's, a very expensive izakaya. It wasn't a great experience, but they did have these unique Gyoza stuff wings, which I've never seen before and were probably the highlight of the meal
- We ate at Okoge, a famous Monjya place. It's the equivalent to an okonomiyaki, but more liquidy. It had cheese, mochi, and fish roe, which gave it a salty, mushy, chewy consistency. I thought it was great, but Zoe kept saying it looked like vomit.
- We hate some manju thing, that I thought was a deep fried mochi, but definitely was not
- I ate fami-chiki literally every day from Familymart to try every variation of it. For ¥200, it was the best snack
We took the Shinkansen to ShinFuji where we planned to go to the Shibazakura festival at Mt. Fuji. We took the less common route, because the Five Lakes area was already booked up due to Golden week. But the bus was not too bad, it left from ShinFuji direct at 7:00, and was only 2600 Yen / person
The hotel we stayed at gave free breakfast, and having to catch the bus at 7:00am, we thought getting breakfast at 6:00am, right at the start, would be fine. But we were still caught up in a line, it was nuts.
When we arrived at Fuji, the sight was stunning; the sky was clear so we could see Fuji in its full grandeur, the moss was in full bloom, and it wasn't completely packed with people yet. I think it was one of the most memorable views I've seen; comparable to Dolomite's Secada Valley or Iceland's Svínafellsjökull. The park was themed around Peter Rabbit, and they had little popups with the characters in the forest and stories. I wish I could have stayed there a bit longer before leaving for Kyoto.

Kyoto

Despite me saying that I was grateful for being able to eat everything and anything, it did hit me in Kyoto that we were burning through cash much faster than expected. With all the random splurging, we did go through 100$/day (for 2 people). I got to experience taking money out of a 7-11 ATM, which was unbelievably convenient. It is also much cheaper than exchanging it in Canada, and it only charged 2$ transaction fee. It was unbelievable. Suffice to say it did not completely hinder our random food eating.
Knowing now that any popular place would have a line, we went to Yamamotomenzo for brunch at opening hour. There was already a line, and was even told that reservations were all taken (like wtf? it's 11am). We ended up taking take out, and luckily we did. The noodles were quite unique; they were very chewy, but also had a firm core. We also got chicken tempura, which was different but was tasty.
We walked our way to the Kiyomizu Dera, Yasaka-Jinja, Gion, and Nishiki market. It was so packed with people that it was much less enjoyable. I wanted to explore the NIshiki market more, but it was too late with everything closing. I saw a mini-pig bar there, which would have been neat to go to; Shiba cafes were too popular now.
I learned about warabi mochi, which I ended up looking up and realising that warabi are the fiddle heads which are becoming popular vegetables here. I didn't realise you could make them into mochi. Also warabi mochi is different from regular mochi in that even at room temperature, it tastes colder on the tongue, which was unique.
We found some slimy soap, which was some novelty that Zoe ended up getting.
Zoe also got another souvenir, a Miffy coin pouch from the miffy store; we thought she lost it, and ended up getting another one, but turns out it was just at the bottom of the bag. We noticed that there was a lot of child character specific stores that was thriving with the Japanese audience; Peter Rabbit, Miffy, Momoland
We went to the Arashiyama Bamboo at around 7 am hoping to miss the crowds. Unfortunately, by that time it was already filled with influencers taking all kinds of selfies. It was impressive to see the line of people trying to get a spot for a selfie. We walked through the forest to the garden leading to the river.
We ate some soba at Arashiyama Yoshimura. There was already a line up at 9:45 when it opened up at 10:30. The line went all around the block. The food was okay, and definitely not worth the 30$ meal and the 1hr wait.
From there, we went to the monkey park, which was across the river and up a hill. I imagine during winter it would be more fun since there was an onsite hotspring. It reminded me of the monkey park in Nagano.
Normally, from Arashiyama you'd go to the Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), but Zoe wasn't necessarily interested in seeing that, so I convinced her to go to Nara to go play with some deers. I think Nara is always a fun place to go; deers roaming around, bossing people to give them their senbei is always a good time. It did feel very different this time as there were more tourists and the deers looked overfed. There were herds of them just chilling under a tree with crowds of tourists leaving stacks of senbei beside them. We had to go deeper into the park to find the hungry deers.
We left Kyoto to stay the night in Osaka. Originally we had plans to go to Nintendo World in Orlando Studios Japan. But reviews said to be expected to wait in line for hours for a single ride. So we ended up roaming the streets.
We got a weekend pass, which was only 630 Yen (3 rides on the subway), and ended up in dotonbori. We wanted to go to some specialty stories, but there were lines everywhere. The lines for lining up had lines, and people said those were booked and had to come another day.
We got lucky and found a Chibo (a fancy okonomiyaki place) that had no line. We had bar seats so we could watch them cook, which is part of the experience with okonomiyaki. We topped off our lunch with takoyaki as dessert from two of the biggest vendors there.
We went to Osaka castle and walked around the castle, and went to the ferris wheel by the aquarium. To kill some time until sunset, we went to the arcade where they had the UFO games. Zoe won a seal on her first try! We had to carry Shiro-Tan for the rest of the trip.
For dinner, we went to an izakaya for dinner that specialises in tempura and clam miso soup. The novelty of this izakaya is that you can throw the clam shell on the ground. Apart from the novelty, the place was a bit expensive and I had to wander around for more food.

Kanazawa

After going through the typical Osaka/Kyoto/Tokyo route, we went north to an area neither Zoe or I haven't been to, Kanazawa. We had a ryokan booking there at an old traditional bath house at Hatori. The entire bath house felt like something from Spirited Away.
When we arrived, we got some green tea, sweets, and gelato. We got rained out that day, but considering we were going in the hotspring all day.
The dinner was in a restaurant in another tower of the building, which was a bit disappointing, but the dinner itself was fantastic. There were about 35 items in the dinner, all made from local ingredients. We stayed here for two days, and I half expected to get the same dinner twice, but we were lucky that we got a new set the second night. There was also a small taiko performance after the meal that we got to enjoy.
I woke up the next day at 6am, hoping no one was using the public bath, but of course there was 1 other person. They had an outdoor cedar bath with water spilling over. With the cool morning breeze it was a fantastic way to start the day. It also significantly helped with my plantar fasciitis
I learned that onsens are actually regulated with chemical compositions and regular testing. This one had a temp of 41C
From Hatori, we took the train to Kanazawa to see one of the 3 perfect gardens in Japan. It was very green and well laid out. We saw how meticulous the workers were cleaning it to remove every sprout that did not belong.
We went to the castle park where they recreated the castle that burned down. It was the first castle to be built in the traditional way since the Meiji era. The woodwork is impressive; they had 3-way lock joints, which I thought was an amazing feat of spatial geometry.
Kanaza also had a historic district, similar to Kyoto with teahouses & geishas. We didn't see a geisha, but they still do performances there
The Hatori experience would have been great, but in the end they charged us 3500 Yen when we were checking out, because we lost one of our 2 NFC key cards. For an NFC card that costs cents to create, and that no other hotel cared about, it was insane how much they were asking for this. We tried looking for it and ended up missing our train, and ruining the schedule for the day; we didn't end up going to Takayama that day. We ended up roaming Toyama that day, which felt a bit weird since it looks just as modern as Tokyo, but it felt like a ghost town. It's as if the buildings were just built and people were just starting to move in. Our consolation for the day was that we stayed in the JAL hotel, which was probably the nicest hotel we stayed at (and cheapest).
We used Toyama as the entry way into the alps. We took the Alpine Snow route, which advertised snow walls of 13m, but I guess when in person 13m doesn't seem so tall. The peak of the mountain had a nice trail and we walked around the pond and to the future trail. It would be nice to come back during fall/summer. To make use of our ticket (9600 Yen) we headed down to Bijoudara, which is a primary forest, and had a trail that looked unkempt.
We noticed a lot of Cantonese speaking people on the trip, and it reminded us of the stark difference in culture.
Gotta eat the Jewel of Toyama for dinner, and also get 50% off sushi at the department store. Best. Thing. Ever. Such a good deal and good sushi.
We eventually went to Takayama and walked around the historic district. We didn't get to see the parade floats, but went to the folk open air museum; it was so pretty and had Gassho houses, so didn't need to make a separate trip to Shirakawago.
We had the Hida beef for lunch, which we thought was much better than the Tokyo yakiniku we went to. They had thicker cuts and the meat was more flavourful.
On the trip back to Tokyo, we stopped by Matsumoto where I used to live. It was very nostalgic to go there, but I was surprised at how much changed. We went to the castle there and got lucky that Zoe got to see an original castle.
In Tokyo we stayed in Odaiba, and Zoe won another toy from those UFO machines. This time she won a Pooh, so now we have 2 stuffed animals to bring back. We also got to see the life-size gundam; it moves...