Day 7: Ghibli Museum

On thursday was our trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum! This was one of the things we had most been looking forward to about our trip to Japan. It is easiest to get tickets from your own country before you travel. We got ours from JTB travel in the UK. We took the train to Mitaka station. If you go out the south exit of the station you can get on the special Ghibli bus! It costs 300 yen for a 2-way ticket (About £2.45) and takes about 5 minutes. You can also walk as it is pretty much a straight route form the station to the museum. The bus is also a normal city bus but it has cute Ghibli stuff on the outside. here’s Lily in front of the bus:

When you get off the bus some fancy looking people direct you towards the museum entrance. You exchange your piece of paper you got back in your home country for an entry ticket. These tickets are really cool! They are pieces of real 35mm film from the movies! Lily got a scene from ‘Only Yesterday’ and James got a scene from ‘Ponyo’

We then proceeded into the main building. This museum is seriously amazing. you really feel like you are inside a Hayao Miyazaki film!! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside so these are from the website.

Immediately to the right of the entrance hall is a room all about animation and how it works. It had film reels and levers and cranks and lots of ways for children to interact with the displays. The coolest thing in this room was a large round display. There was a circular base with lots of figures on it, such as the children from Totoro jump roping and the catbus running. Each of these models went in a circle around the centre and each model was slightly different. The display would start spinning very fast and then a strobe light would flash and it would make the models look like they were moving, the same way animation works! It’s really hard to explain and you’re not allowed cameras in the museum so I can’t show you, but it was really awesome!

We then explored the other levels. All of the displays were very interesting; some more for adults with some reading (although it was all in Japanese so we couldn’t read it) and some for kids, like the huge catbus!!

There was a really interesting display that showed replicas of the rooms in which animators and film directors work and where they come up with their ideas. It was amazing how detailed they were and it was so cool to be able to look at original plans for the movies.

After looking at all the exhibitions we went back downstairs to the saturn theatre where you can see special short Ghibli films that can’t be seen anywhere else! The one we saw was about a boy who planted a gem and grew a tiny world or something….not sure because it was all in Japanese.

 

We then went up to the roof terrace to see the 5m tall statue of the warrior robot from ‘Laputa: Castle in the Sky’. We were allowed to take a picture with the statue and a couple in front of us offered to take a picture of us together and we took a picture of them together.

 

Then we went to the gift shop to look for souvenirs. We bought a few small things that added up to quite a lot! But we expected it to be expensive. Lily got a totoro purse that clips onto your bag and has a window to put a card in, she uses it for her train pass “suica”. And you can pull it out from where it is clipped onto the bag on a reel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then headed outside to look for the cafe as it was about lunch time. We found it but there was a line of about 20 people just waiting to get in. However just around the corner was a little shop selling hot dogs and ice cream. We got both 🙂

It was then time to head home. When we got back to our subway station we decided to go find that supermarket again. This time we didn’t get lost and managed to pick up lots of lovely food. Now our fridge is fully stocked! And we got some proper rice to cook instead of the microwave stuff.

 

For dinner James had a vegetable and noodle stir fry and Lily had salmon nigiri with gyoza! yumyum!

 

See you next time!

Sayo’onara!

Day 6: Checking out ekoda

Lily was feeling a bit better on Wednesday so we decided we’d take it easy and just have a look around the area of Ekoda (our nearest train station) The station is about a 12 minute walk from our apartment. We also wanted to find a proper supermarket as we had been living out of convenience stores for a week! We saw on Google maps that there was a supermarket between Shinegota (Subway station about 5 mins away) and Ekoda (Train station 12 mins away), so we walked up the road between them. Sure enough we soon came ccross a nice little supermarket. We had a peer in and decided to go in on the way home so that we wouldn’t have to carry our shopping around with us.

When we previously went to Ekoda Station to get the train we noticed a cute looking little ramen restaurant so since it was about lunch time we decided to go check it out. On the way up we popped into a 7/11 to get some cash out (The only places we can get cash are a 7/11 or a post office). We found the restaurant and it had a sign on the door that said “please come in”. That’s the only thing that was in English! It had a ticket machine like the last restaurant we went to but no pictures!! Luckily the word ramen (which is a soup with noodles) in spelled using katakana (a phonetic alphabet) which we can read! So we saw the word ラーメン (which sounds out as ra-a-me-n) and clicked that! We handed our tickets over the the man behind the counter and took a seat.

It was a very small place with nice décor. However as soon as we sat down we noticed…..cockroaches! They weren’t very big but they were crawling all over the chopsticks and condiments. There were only 3, but they hung about for the entire meal, probably hoping to feast on the leftovers! The ramen was very good and turned out to be pork ramen.

We then decided to head home as Lily still wasn’t feeling too good. We started off down the road we THOUGHT was the one we had come up. The road we had walked up took us about 7 minutes. Once we had been on this new road for more than 10 minuted we realised that we were not where we thought we were. having no idea which way is North doesn’t help either! We came across another 7/11 and popped in to ask for directions. We managed to get across our meaning in Japanese and we were pointed in the right direction by a kind woman at the store. Turns out that we had somehow gotten really far away. We managed to get back eventually. we didn’t go back to the original supermarket because we were exhausted and it was really hot, so we grabbed some dinner from the convenience store. Here’s what we had:

Gyoza and rice, yummy!

We had an early night ready for our trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum the next day!

Sayo’onara!

Day 5: Lily is ill…

So Lily woke up with a very bad cold on Tuesday. She slept until about 2 in the afternoon and we didn’t leave the apartment. We were a bit worn out anyway from doing so many things straight away as well as coping with jetlag! Sorry, more coming soon.

Sayo’onara!

Day 4: Akihabara

So on day 4 of our month in Tokyo we decided to go and check out the electronics district Akihabara. This place is the centre of trade for all electronics and otaku culture. Otaku culture means…. people that are obsessed with anime and manga. So there are many shops that are dedicated to selling figures and anime and manga characters.

James was hungry when we got to Akihabara, but we didn’t want to spend ages looking for somewhere to eat, so he succumbed to McDonalds! It was actually way tastier than McDonald’s in the UK!

 We then headed into Yodobashi camera, the biggest electronics store in Tokyo. I failed to take a picture because I’m silly but it was HUGE!! GINORMOUS! There were about 8 floors (I think) and each one was so big you could not see one end when you were at the other. It was like a shopping mall size, a big shopping mall, but all one store! And they had sections for any kind of electronics you could want. We browsed for a while but left after about 30 minutes, it was all too much!

We then headed for the other side of Akihabara station where lots of the otaku shops are. The buldings in this place are crazy and huge and there are neon lights and flashing signs everywhere!

view from inside a building

the first place we went into was a shop called LAOX. There were two of them right opposite eachother! And both of them were huge! We wondered round each of the 6 or so floors and marvelled at the amount of anime figurines and toys! We’ll definitely be coming back to pick up some gifts for people back home.

We then had a look around the general area. There were so so so many shops, both electronic and anime related. We did not spend too much time there as it was a very hot day and we were quite tired.

After going home and resting for a while we decided to try out a restaurant we had seen near Ekoda train station. It had big pictures of the food on the outside with prices. It turned out to be one of those places whre there is a ticket machine just inside the door and you have to press a button to choose what meal you want and insert money, then give the ticket to a member of staff. Of course it was all in Japanese and there weren’t pictures on the ticket machine, so we went back outside and memorised the writing beneath the picture of the meal that we wanted and then found the matching button. We managed to get the correct meals and they were very delicious! Udon noodles in some kind of soup with some friend onion and carrot on top!

We then headed home and rested for the evening.

Sayo’onara!

Day 3: Ginza and Tempura

Well yesterday we were going to go to Harajuku in the morning to see the cosplayers. However during the night we experienced our first bout of jetlag – woke up at about midnight and could not sleep again until about 4am. consequently we woke up late and decided not to go to harajuku as apparently most of the things with cosplayers happen in the morning. So instead we decided to go take our first look at Ginza, and especially the Muji store.

It took us about half an hour to get there on two tubes. We knew that the Ginza station was directly under the Sony building, with all the showrooms of the latest techy stuff! So we headed up into it. However there were lots of people just sitting around looking like they were waiting for something, and although the showroom had an ‘open’ sign there were lots of drawn curtains…so we decided we’d come back another time.

We headed outside are were immediately confronted with crowds of bustling people and enormous mirrored buildings. The sight was quite amazing and something we’ll never forget!

We headed down the main road toward where we thought Muji was and took a right. We noticed quite quickly that on this street there were lots of tables and chairs out in the middle of the road. Later on we realised that a lot of the main roads are pedestrianised on Sundays! it was quite a large area as well. 

The main shopping street

There were so many shops! And a lot of really really posh shops like Gucci and Dior. We didn’t go into those… it didn’t really look like anyone was going into them, the staff looked quite bored.

We headed down this road and eventually found a sigh for the Muji store. It is on the basement level of a department store. Walking into the air conditioning was such a relief after the blazing sun outside!

The Muji store was very well designed, with lots of nice open spaces and a simple wood theme. There were clothes, books, homewares, food and stationary. The stationary was what Lily was looking for the whole time…she has a thing for Japanese stationary…

The books section in the Muji store

We bought a few bits of stationary (but not too much as we had already bought some at LOFT the previous day) and headed back up to the street. We have begun to notice that when you are in a store with the air conditioning you completely forget how hot it is outside!! And the air is so thick. Next we decided to have a look at the UNIQLO store since it was just across the street. We had heard that it is a very popular clothing store in Japan, and this was proved by the amount of people in there! It was hard to move and you found yourself being funnelled along in a line around the shop.

In the city we come from (Brighton), the biggest store has about 4 levels, so by the time we got to the 5th level of UNIQLO we were thinking “Gosh, how many more floors can there be?!” It turns out there are 12 floors in this UNIQLO shop in Ginza! We got to about floor no.7 before we gave up as we were hungry and it was very crowded. We didn’t buy anything but they had some nice clothes so maybe we’ll go back later.

We then went in hunt of somewhere to get some lunch. We headed down some side streets in the direction of the Ginza station and came across a restaurant called ‘Casual Tempura Restaurant’. This restaurant, like many other restaurants in Tokyo, had plastic food in the window with prices. The food was very reasonably priced so we decided to check it out.

the inside of the shop was quite small, only about 10 tables, but had a very nice atmosphere. There was quiet music playing and we were allowed to choose where we wanted to sit. As soon as we sat down a man popped out of the kitchen with two complementary drinks. These turned out to be very weak, chilled black coffee. It was very welcome after the heat outside! We ordered by pointing at the picture menu and saying “Kore o kudasai” which means “this please”. It was only about 5 minuted before our food was brought to us. It looked amazing and tasted just as good! This was our first time having tempura in Japan and it was much  better than back in England.

It contained tempura soft boiled egg, green beans, mushroom, 2 shrimps, white fish and some other kind of fish. All on a big bowl of rice!

We will definitely be going back to this restaurant if we are in Ginza again!

We then headed home for an evening of rest.

Sayo’onara!

Day 2: Sunshine City and Octopus ice cream!

Yesterday we decided that we wanted to check out Ice Cream city that we first saw in one of TokyoCooney’s videos. We especially wanted to try some nasty flavours of ice cream.

We knew that Ice Cream City was in Sunshine city so we decided to head there on the train. This was the first time we had gone form our local train station instead of on the underground. It took us a 12 minute beautiful walk to get there. This was the first day that it hadn’t been cloudy and the heat was intense! Especially since we headed out at about midday, woops.

This is one of the roads we walked down

After a short ride on the train and one change we found ourselves at Higashi-ikebukuro station. We had looked at a map of how to get form the station to Sunshine City and took a picture of it with the compact to take with us (we don’t have a printer here in Japan), however we then had a problem when we left the station – we had no idea which way was north…I think we should get a compass as this keeps happening. After a while of looking around we finally thought to look up! This is because sunshine city is directly below a huuuuge building.

This is the building above Sunshine City

The inside of Sunshine city is huge and has about 20 ways to get in and out on multiple levels. The whole complex spans 4 levels. The top level is dedicated to food and restaurants whilst the other 3 levels are a mix of clothes, books, and other random shops (but mostly women’s clothes).

However there is one clothing store dedicated to men…with an interesting name

 Outside a lot of Japanese restaurants you will find display cases housing plastic replicas of the food that is available and the prices. And the food you get is delicious and actually looks like the replica!

So we ended up wondering around sunshine city for about an hour and a half. We couldn’t find Ice Cream City anywhere! We thought that maybe it had closed and we were very sad. We managed to find an information desk and get across our question of “where is Ice Cream City?” in Japanese. The helpful lady pointed where to go and showed us on a map. It turns out you have to go through Namjatown to get to it. Namjatown is like a little amusement park with some small rides and lots of food themed places. In here is Ice Cream City and also Gyoza Land! It cost us 300 yen each for entry (about £2.40 each).

Here is the entrance to Namjatown

 And the entrance to Icecream City!

Inside there were lots of places to eat ice cream as well as a bunch of arcade machines, nearly all of them claw machines in which you could win things like huge stuffed toy animal heads and manga books. We had a couple of tries on them but didn’t win anything. We then moved on to actually trying some of the ice creams. There were some quite ridiculous flavours such as octopus, squid, oxe tongue, salt, tulip, tea, viper etc… We went for the oxe tongue and octopus. They were vile, and that’s an understatement. We also got some chocolate to wash it down with.

 

We then went to find gyoza land! There were about 20 different little shops selling gyoza. We chose a random one and had some extremely yummy shrimp (I think) gyoza.

We walked around Sunshine City a bit more and bought some pens and notebooks from LOFT. I love Japanese stationary!!! We then took a look at the area outside Sunshine City and spotted a big building called animate. It’s full of anime goodies so we decided to pop in and have a look! Big mistake! It was a Saturday afternoon and it was FILLED with teenagers! You could barely move or see anything so we decided we’ll come back another time. However we did see this cool guy outside the front of the shop…yes that is a guy!

the rest of the afternoon was quite relaxed and we went out to a restaurant very close to our apartment called Restaurant Gusto for dinner.It was our first time going out to eat since we got here and it was quite nerve racking. We chose this restaurant because it is a family restaurant and so has pictures of the meals available, so we could simply point to the ones we wanted. The food was very good and we had a pudding as well, all for under £18 for both of us!

The next blog will be about our first time in Ginza!

Sayo’onara!

-Lily

First day in Tokyo: Harajuku

So after falling asleep the previous evening at about 8.30pm we woke up at around 1am to the sound of rain. We felt quite awake so opened up the balcony door to have a look outside. The rain was much heavier than we thought it was! We went back to sleep quite quickly and didn’t wake again until 11.30am! I guess we needed 15 hours of sleep after not sleeping for 36 hours.

Our first venture of the day was breakfast. We didn’t have much, so a small pot of rice for each of us sufficed. We only had a large bottle of soy sauce and no small dishes so James accidentally drowned his rice.  The next adventure was trying to figure out the water heater in the bath room. It is very old and requires a combination of button pushing and handle cranking. We got the hang of it in the end but then James had trouble with the shower. You have to push a lever towards a shower picture and then adjust the temperature. The further you push the lever the higher the water pressure. For James the temperature kept fluctuating between freezing cold and boiling hot so he had to quickly use it while it was in transition. However Lily figured out that you just have to put the shower on full power and the coldest temp and it stays nice and warm constantly. Also… we forgot towels…so we used the hairdryer to try and dry ourselves.

The bath and heater

Finally after getting clean and dressed we were off into Tokyo to get some supplies (like towels!) We looked up where to get towels and found that they can usually be found in hyaku-en shops, which are like the equivalent of a pound shop in England. We found that the largest one was in Harajuku (a trendy shopping district) so we decided to go there and have a look around as well as getting supplies.

On our way out of the apartment we got some Pocari Sweat from the vending machine outside. Yummy! It’s then about a five minute walk to the tube station and then about 10 mins into Shinjuku station on the tube. We decided to change to the next train at Shinjuku…big mistake! This station is even bigger than we thought it was! We eventually managed to find our way onto the Yamanote line and get to Harajuku station.

The entrance to Takeshita Dori (the young people’s shopping street) is very close to the entrance of the station and that’s where to Daiso Harajuku is (pound shop). The entrance to the road has a really cute archway. There were so many cute clothe shops, and a real mix of goth/lolita and more girly shops, plus some hip hop shops. There’s not a lot for guys unless you’re into cosplay.

The first place we went was the Daiso Harajuku, to look for towels and other items. After searching all but the entrance floor (with the security guard at our heels the whole way) we eventually found some towels, although they are nothing like towels at home. They’re quite thin and small, but they get the job done. We also picked up some clothes hangers, chopsticks, soy sauce dishes, cushions to sit on the floor, face wiping cloths for when we’re out and about, and a fan. See our haul on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/JamilyInJapan

Next we just wondered down the shopping road, peering in the shops. There were lots of cute clothes but we didn’t buy anything at the time. When we reached the end of the road we spotted a Starbucks and decided to pop in for a cool drink as it was quite hot outside. the door said push so Lily tried to push on it, but it wouldn’t budge. Turns out, you have to push the panel that says push and the door will slide sideways! After much signing and pointing at pictures on the menu we got our drinks. For Lily, a caramel frappaccino and for James, a green tea and choc chip frappaccino.

We also saw this huge motorbike outside the store and couldn’t help taking a photo!

After this we walked back down Takeshita Dori towards the station. James wanted to take a look in Yoyogi park, just accross the train tracks, so we walked in the direction we though it was, but came to a dead end. So we just went home as we were tired form all the travelling the day before. The train ride home was much easier as we changed at Yoyogi instead of Shinjuku.

Relaxed at home for a bit in the evening. We wanted to go out for dinner but didn’t have enough cash, so we went down to the combini to get some dinner. We found some nice looking dinner and also some natto! (fermented beans)…and it definitely tasted…..fermented…..it wasn’t good.

When we got home we decided to eat dinner and stay up late editing videos. James had teriyaki, Lily had rice and pork.

Sayo’onara!

Travelling to Tokyo

So over the past few days we travelled to Tokyo from the UK. Yes I say days…it took two. The first leg of the journey was from London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi. This flight was very good, it took almost seven hours. As with most long haul flights, this plane came equipped with brand new/unreleased films and old games, So we took full advantage of the facilities.

The stop over in Abu Dhabi was pleasant, we bought expensive pizza and chocolates, but really just spent the time waiting for our connecting flight. This is the Abu Dhabi terminal 3.

And here is what was left of our pizza when we thought to take a photo…

The next leg of the journey was from Abu Dhabi to Narita. This one took ten hours, it was overnight and barely a wink of sleep was had. This was the longest ten hours of our lives. The plane was smaller and older than the first but I can’t really find any faults with the plane or service, so Etihad are recommended by us.

On arrival we discovered that we had not been given immigration or customs forms, but everyone else had…we had to get them at the immigration desk. This took so long that our luggage had been taken off the carousel and left by the side of it. After passing seamlessly through customs we headed for the Mobal Narita counter to collect our (free) rented mobiles, we pay very high text and call charges, but they’re only for emergencies, so it doesn’t matter.

They’re the completely the same, except for the colours.

We then went and bought our NEX+Suica package, it’s basically a cheaper way of getting the train ride into Tokyo and getting a Suica card, much like the Oyster card for Londoners. After the hour and a half ride ride, with much nodding off, we arrived at Shinjuku train station…never again. The place is bigger than an airport terminal and with many more exits. we had to walk for 15 minutes in order to get to the west exit, which incidentally has many exits itself.

We then realised that we hadn’t printed the map of how to get to the offices of Sakura House (the company of whom we are renting an apartment from), all we had was “leave via west exit”..HA…”then walk for seven minutes” and the address in English. So we decided to drop by the west exit’s koban (Police box) and ask a policeman for directions. However he spoke no English and seemed confused by the English address. But he understood the postcode and showed us the building on a large map of the area (Japanese cities are built very logically, so he knew how to find it).

After three hours of actually being in Japan we still hadn’t been outside until we left Shinjuku station. The humidity hit us like a brick wall. but it wasn’t too hot as it was overcast. As we stepped off of the stairs the first thing we noticed was the towering buildings surrounding us, then we noticed the cleanliness of everything, seriously, it’s the cleanest place we’ve ever been!

It took us roughly 10 minutes to walk to Sakura House with our luggage, we were there for about 45 minutes signing papers and leaning how to sort the rubbish, etc.

Before we did anything else we went to the Seven Eleven across the street and bought a lot of supplies for dinner, breakfast and general necessities.

We had been given a map of how to get to our apartment, so following the directions we found ourselves at   Shin-Egota station, leaving by exit A1 as we had been told, we walked for at least two miles before deciding to ask someone why we hadn’t come across our turning…turns out we should have left by exit A2 as it actually said on the map, all this meant we had gone in completely the wrong direction and had to walk back past the station to our apartment, dragging our luggage the entire way. Furthermore when we arrived at our apartment we had to carry our luggage up three flights of stairs!

On opening the door for the first time we first noticed an odd weedy smell, we shortly realised that this smell was the tatami mats in the bedroom. Most say that this smell bugs them for some time, but after 10 minutes we no longer noticed it. It isn’t a terribly large apartment, but it is larger that most available to rent for one month this close to the city, so we’re happy with it. A video of this apartment will soon be up on our YouTube channel, so keep an eye out for it. http://www.youtube.com/user/JamilyInJapan

All that remained for us to do was eat and sleep, which we did in that order and the latter for 15 hours.

More to come very soon.

Sayo’onara

At the Hotel…

So after a 2 hour car journey we are at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in London, Heathrow. And thanks to James’ dad we have access to the exclusive executive club lounge! ooh how fancy!! Includes free internet, nibbles and booze. 

The room is incredibly fancy with a sofa and corner desk! and a huuuge bed! Looking forward to a good sleep tonight as we got up very early this morning.

Later we will be going to the Irish pub/restaurant for dinner, looks very nice! However I really just want to go to bed so that it’s tomorrow already and we can go!!! I’m so excited!!

Sayo’onara!

-Lily

Ready to go!

So we’re off to the Heathrow Crowne plaza hotel soon. Thank you to James’ dad for booking it for us!! We’ll be spending the night at the hotel as our flight is at 9.15 tomorrow morning and we don’t want to be stuck in traffic and miss our flight. Also, thank you to my mum for driving us up to the hotel!

Suitcases are ready and hand luggage almost done. Pictures coming soon!

Sayo’onara!