We woke up and packed up, as today marks our last day at Asakusabushi before we spend one night in Akasaka. It apparently did not occur to us how much space all of the souvenirs we purchased so far would take up, as on top of our backpacks, we are both now carrying a plastic bag of miscellaneous goods. We step outside into a wave of heat, with the weather forecasting more to come, reaching temperatures of about 28. This unfortunately coincides with the day we will be walking around the most so far. We start by heading out for coffee at a chain cafe here called Caffe Veloce, grabbing an iced coffee before going over to the station and catching a train down to Chuo city in Tokyo.
Chuo is known for a couple things, like the expensive brand name shopping district of Ginza or the massive fish market of Tsukiji, the latter of which is our first destinations here. Typically, the earlier you arrive at Tsukiji, the better. As places start opening up at around 5am, and the market becomes very crowded at about 9-10am, before places start to close at around noon or 1. Scents of grilled fish and sugar coated desserts get stronger as you get closer to the market, drawing us to the first stall we found, who was selling candied fruit and mochi.
My friend purchased a skewer of strawberries and grapes coated in a glaze, while I grabbed some chocolate mochi with a strawberry on top, as it’s one of my favourite desserts that you can get here. I followed it up with some grilled eel on a stick, egg on a stick, beef teriyaki on a stick (notice a pattern?), and finally wrap it up with some sushi, surprisingly not on a stick. Basically all of the food there is good, as people who run food stalls with only a couple items on the menu tend to know how to make those things very well. We wrap up at around 10:00am, and are already starting to sweat like crazy, as we have all of our luggage on us still, since check in at our next place isn’t until 2:00pm.
To avoid the heat, we walk up through the Ginza shopping strip until we reach the train station and find a coin locker to keep our bags in for now. You can find coin lockers at basically every station in Japan, and it’s a 500-600 yen to keep you stuff in them for a while. We kill time wandering the underground stores and paths connecting to the subway station and around the uncountable number of Izakayas along the railways. Our next planned activity is at 1:30pm, so after a couple hours of this, it finally gets close enough to our time to start heading to our next location.
An immersive augmented reality art museum of TeamLabs. It’s a really cool experience, but hard to describe a lot of it. They use lights, sensors, and water to create really cool rooms that you can navigate through, with ponds that have fish made of light, to gardens that descend around you, it was a ton of fun and I’d definitely recommend if you’re near one of the TeanLabs locations. We wrapped up our visit at TeamLabs, and since it took us until mid afternoon to do so, we could now head over to Akasaka to check into our hotel.
A couple connecting transit lines later and we show up at Asakasa sation. I did not research Asakasa station before going on this trip, since why would I research each and every station we stop at during our travels. When we got there though, we were surprised to find that the entire station and surrounding buildings are themed after Harry Potter. From the music at the station, to the signs, statues, and decor around the area. Banners of the four houses are on cafe’s and shops who sell Harry Potter merchandise and themed drinks or snacks.
It’s a treat (and probably a must see for big Harry Potter fans visiting Tokyo) to walk through and check out the shops, despite their slightly high prices. Especially since it’s not like it’s an amusement park with a cost of entry, it’s literally just the station as soon as you get off of the subway. Very fun place, and we took plenty of photos as we walked through it to check into Nine Hours Capsule Hotel.
For those who don’t know, a capsule hotel is where you check in and can shower and freshen up in a locker room before going to sleep in a small capsule which usually contains nothing but a bed and an outlet. They typically are cheap because of this, so are good options for people on a budget who are travelling somewhere only for 1 night and want a cheap place to sleep before heading out the next day, which is essentially what I wanted from the place. Though at the time of check-in, it was only around 4:00pm, so we still had a night ahead of us.
We dropped off our stuff in the lockers provided by the hotel and caught a train over to Harajuku, which is a small district between Shibuya and Shinjuku, known for dessert stalls and being the main hub for certain types of Japanese fashion trends, such as Visual Kei, Gothic Lolita, or Anime style fashion. Since at this point, the sun had already set and it was the middle of the week, the streets were not as busy as previous times I had been here, which while it makes it easier to get through, also means we didn’t get to see as many cool outfits as we otherwise could have. We grabbed some sweet drinks while there though, before deciding to walk the rest of the way over to Shinjuku.
At this point, we had already walked a decent bit, but since it had cooled down a decent bit since the scorching afternoon, we went for it anyways. Shinjuku is interesting, as it far more resembles some Western cities than it does the rest of Tokyo. Much taller buildings with larger distances between them, larger streets with cars being the main method of transit. While it might be interesting to see the contract and put in perspective the differences Japanese cities can have with North American ones, it does away with most of what I enjoy about Japanese cities, which tend to be close quarters and have a more personal or welcoming feeling.
We wandered around Shinjuku, checking out some of the different districts, before ultimately deciding to head back to our hotel and give our legs some much needed rest, is what I would say if my phone didn’t read 29,000 steps. Dedicated to breaking 30k steps that day, I decided to wander around Asakasa at night while my friend crashed back at the hotel. Satisfied with the refreshing stroll and the now far more impressive 30k steps in a day, I also head back to shower and rest up before we leave Tokyo the next day.
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