We've been to Japan....Now a TR!

[aussie shaz]

Thanks Princess! Last minute packing and waiting now. We leave tonight!!!

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Looking forward to hearing all about it when you get back.

 

[aussie shaz]

Quick update. We're sitting in our room at Hilton Tokyo Bay trying to dry our clothes. It is absolutely pouring down today. It hasn't stopped since the early hours of this morning.
We arrived at Disney yesterday afternoon. Dropped our bags and checked into the hotel, at the Disney Welcome centre. They then gave us our key and sent our bags to the Hilton. Brilliant!
We wandered Disneyland, went on Splash (about 60 min wait at about 4pm). It was slightly different to Disneyland California version, but essentially the same. The characters all look gorgeous. Their fur is so soft and new looking.
We then went back to the hotel to check in, then back to the park. We had dinner (hot dogs and chips) at the Refreshment corner, sitting outside. As we were eating, the Electrical Parade went by. It was beautiful.
At about 8pm, we went on Monsters Ride and Go Seek, with a 50 min wait. It was a nice ride. Walked onto Star Tours at 9.15 with no wait. Similar to Disneyland, but the picture quality was amazing and they had new story lines from the latest Star Wars movie.
Lined up for Space at about 9.35pm. The line then closed at 9.40pm. We were on at 10.15pm. Loved it, as always. Although there was no music, there were a couple of other little things that I liked about this one.
Today was our Disney Sea day. As I said, it's been pouring all day. We have 2 umberellas between the 4 of us. We just soldiered on and got stuff done!
The park is just so quiet. I was so ready for the busiest park ever, but it's probably the quietest park ever today.
We arrived at the gates at 7.55am for a 9am opening. We were about 10 people from the front of our line. The guests from the Disneyland hotels were allowed in at 8.45, and our lines entered at 9am on the dot.
Hubby and son ran to get Fastpasses for Journey to the Centre of the Earth while other son and I walked to 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Journey fastpass was for 9.45am. 20,000 Leagues was a walk-on. I think we were actually the first riders of the day. It was a great ride. Something similar to Nemo, although I don't actually like Nemo. It was really well done.
We then walked on to Sindbad. It was a nice ride. Very cute and really well done.
Then at 10am we used our fastpasses for Journey. It maybe took 20 mins to get through the line. We enjoyed this ride as we didn't know what to expect. It was a lot of fun.
We then got fastpasses for TOT at 10.25. The return was at 11.30am. We did Indy as single riders and were the only ones doing this. All 4 of us walked straight on, with 2 in the same vehicle.
11.30 we used our fastpass for TOT. It took maybe 10 mins in an inside line. Similar the the other TOT's, just a different storyline.
Then lunch at New York Deli, and here we are drying our clothes and shoes to be ready to go back and do it again! (Hair dryer is drying the shoes, iron to dry the clothes, jeans, jackets, undies!)
Think I'll buy myself a rain poncho when we get back there

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Sounds like despite the rain you are having a good time. Hope the rest of the trip has been good too. Oh I want to go back to TDL (both parks!!) Enjoy!!

 

[aussie shaz]

Thanks Wendy. We had a ball. I'll try to get some photos up and a bit of a report soon.

 

[FireflyFi]

Good to hear you're having such a great time! And I love the quality at TDR, everything always looks so fresh and new. How many boxes have popcorn have you tried so far? Hehe

 

[PrincessInOz]

Enjoy!!

 

[aussie shaz]

Hi Fi. The boys probably had about 6 boxes over the 3 days, but only honey and caramel. They loved the caramel, but not the honey so much.

 

[LivingforDisney]

Looking forward to the rest of your report.

 

[aussie shaz]

I've finally downloaded all of my photos, so I thought I'd try to start this TR.

We left Melbourne on a Tuesday morning at about 1am. We arrived into Natita at about 8am. The flight was hideous, as are all overnight flights, but fine in every other way. Jetstar was fine and didn't reschedule or cancel our flights, so that a bonus.
We took the limobus instead of the train because I felt that it would be easier, and we could deal with the trains later.
We arrived at Shinjuku train station and I managed to get us to our accommodation, the Blossom Hotel Shinjuku without needing a map or anything. I'd researched and checked google maps etc, so automatically knew where to go. We checked into the hotel and headed out to explore.

We purchased Suica train cards (like MYKI in Melbourne, but works much better) and took our first Japanese train ride. It was so easy.
We headed to Harajuku. It was still school holidays, so was pretty busy. The main street is called Takeshita Dori. Lots of little shops, cafes etc.
As you can see, it was very difficult to even walk through.

And they had magnificent crepes there too. Mine was chocolate, strawberry, banana and cream. Yum.

I had read about a cafe called the Kawaii Monster Cafe, so we headed there, but it was closed for the afternoon and didn't open for a couple more hours. We were tired and needed a rest, so we headed back to the hotel. We had Maccas for dinner and had an early night

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 2. The hotel was fantastic and we all had a great sleep. We got 2 twin rooms, and they were big enough. Not huge, but nothing like our tiny rooms in Shin-Osaka were to be. The Blossom is in a great location, so close to the train station (busiest in the world I believe) and also shops, restaurants etc.
This morning we had Krispy Kremes for breakfast and headed to Akihabara. Akihabara is the electronics, manga, geeky capital of Tokyo. This is what my 15 year old son had been waiting for.





The boys loved the arcades too


A girl advertising a maid cafe

There are also Gachapon everywhere. I guess we just know them as those machines you put a couple of bucks in and a plastic ball falls out with a little plastic toy. In Japan, they are literally everywhere! Some interesting toys you can get too.







After lunch at Mos Burger in Akihabara we headed to Asakusa. Sensoji temple is here and there's a lovely little road you walk up to get to the temple. The temple is lovely, but of course, very busy.
















There were lots of lovely young ladies dressed in kimono everywhere. I suspect most were tourists, but it made for the perfect photos with the beautiful Sakura as backdrop

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 2 continued.

After Sensoji, we walked to the Tokyo Skytree. We could see if from Sensoji, so just headed that way. It was a nice walk over the river and we saw a couple of different neighbourhoods on the way.





It was great to see the Skytree up close, but we decided we couldn't go to the top. It was quite expensive, and there were bus loads of people lining up. I'm not sure we would have even got a ticket on the day if we had wanted. There's a shopping mall at the bottom, where there's a Studio Ghibli shop. We weren't going to the Ghibli museum, so the shop would have to do for my sons souvenir shopping.



After the Skytree we took the train to Ueno. I'd read that it was a great Sakura viewing place. Of course, so did the rest of Japan!









People have hanami parties under the Sakura. You'll see blue 'leisure sheets' everywhere. People even camp out from early morning. Some of the setups were amazing. You can tell they are well planned partyers!





We had dinner here from the street stalls. There were many interesting foods. We're not adventurous at all, so just had crab sticks, yakitori and corn on the cob.






One thing we realised, especially on this night, was that there are hardly any public rubbish bins. I have heard that people usually eat where they buy and then return the rubbish to the vendor, but it was very strange. We also found that there was a lack of public seating. It would have been lovely to just sit and enjoy some areas, but there just wasn't anywhere to sit.

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 3

This morning we had breakfast at a lovely little French bakery just near the hotel and walked to Shinjuku Gyoen park. I hadn't specifically planned to go here, but really glad we did. It is a beautiful, spread out garden with lots of different plants and trees. Of course the stars of the show in Spring are the Sakura.

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 3 cont.

Next stop...Ikebukuro. We had to head here for the Pokemon Mega centre. 15 year old got rid of quite a bit of money here.



Pokemon centre is at a shopping complex called Sunshine City. Here there is also a couple of Namco 'theme parks'. The boys and I went to visit Namjatown. It was a bit disappointing, but they made the most of it seeing we had to pay to get in, then pay for anything we wanted to do inside.











After some lunch in Ikebukuro, we headed to Nakano. You may see a theme in these first few days. It was mostly for the 15yr old to whet his 'only in Japan/geeky' appetite. LOL

Nakano has a shopping type centre called Nakano Broadway. It is full of anime, character, manga shops. There were figurines everywhere! More money spent here by the 15yr old.









And if you like icecream....





That's 8 different flavours

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 3 cont.

After finishing the ice creams, we went back to Shinjuku and our hotel for a break. Every day was pretty full on, so we often needed an afternoon break.

After our break we headed to Shibuya. Shibuya has the 'Shibuya scramble' with the huge intersection where cars stop in all directions, and people walk in every direction.
This is also the train station where the Hachiko statue is located. In case anyone is not aware, Hachiko waited for his master every night at the train station for him to return from work. One day the master died at work, so never returned. Hachiko waited there every afternoon for years, but his master never returned.



Shinjuku station South Exit



The scramble





Hachiko even had a friend this day. No idea about the story behind the cat.



Of course we visited the Disney Store. It was very cute, but had tiny stairways and was absolutely packed. Masses of people were in some line for something, but I don't know what it was. It looked like just park tickets, but don't know why the long line.





I love the dogs in these ads.

This was the night we nearly had a meltdown over food! I had researched a cafe which looked kinda cute. It looked to have a Super Mario Bros theme. Yes, it was called a maid cafe but I didn't really know what to expect. So we headed there, were led to a table and agreed to pay the 1,000 yen cover fee each before we ordered. At this moment, the lights dimmed and the maids came out. Well, you should have seen the look on my families faces! The lights were down and we ran!! I feel really bad, but we hadn't ordered or anything, and if we had stayed there I don't think my family would ever go on holidays with me again.
So, after my terrible dinner decision we didn't know what to do. I had also read about a sushi train restaurant, but really doubted myself after the maid cafe fiasco. There were no other ideas so we headed to sushi. THIS made Mum the family travel planner hero again. We all loved it, even if we don't go much for sushi. It was so much fun. You order from a tablet at each seat, and your food comes comes spinning out at you on a conveyor belt. You then take the food, and press the button and the tray spins back to the kitchen.

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 4.

Today was O'Daiba day. I had considered staying here for our Tokyo portion of the trip as it had a great hotel with a room to fit us all at a great price. But I decided it was just too far from anything else. I'm glad we didn't stay here.
You can get here a few ways, but we chose the Yurikamome. This is a driverless, rubber wheeled, elevated train. You still need to take a normal train to a certain station, and then catch this driverless train to O'Daiba. You can also catch a normal train (which we did on the way back) or a boat. The Yurikamome travels over the Rainbow bridge, so you have an awesome view all around.

We mainly wanted to visit O'Daiba for Sega Joypolis. The were also a few other attractions here. The feel we got of the whole place was that it was a little run down. It definately didn't have a resort area feel. It was a little industrial I guess.

Anyway, the kids bought the whole day pass for Joypolis. They did a few rides and enjoyed it, but it was really busy (still school holidays).

We wandered to a few of the other attractions. The giant Gundam statue, the Statue of Liberty, Toyota Magaweb and a mall that looks like a 16th century European town. This mall, I think, must have been some 'Dogs Welcome' mall. I have never in my life seen so many dogs, dog shops, dog clothes etc etc. the dogs in Japan are generally little 'handbag' dogs and were just so cute. Little fluff balls. People had them in their arms, in baby carriers, in handbags and in doggie prams. It was awesome!












Yep, this puppy costs approx. $14,000 AUD!

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 5.

Today we were leaving Tokyo for Osaka. We still had a few places we wanted to re-visit around Shinjuku, so we left the luggage at the hotel and did some more shopping and the kids played a few more arcade games.

At about lunchtime we picked up our luggage and headed to the station. We needed to exchange our JR passes, so found the correct office. It took about 30mins to do this as there was quite a line-up of people. We then took the train to Tokyo station, found our Shinkansen platform and purchased some Ekiben (travel bento boxes) for lunch on the train. We took the Hikari, which is the quickest Shinkansen allowed on the JR pass. I had read that if we got on at Tokyo station then we would have more chance to be able to put or 4 large suitcases behind the last row of seats. All worked well and we enjoyed our first Shinkansen trip. It took about 3 hours. Of course, all trains were perfectly on time, which was wonderful. We did miss out on seeing Mt Fuji though. I don't think we actually missed it, I think it was actually covered in cloud and/or mist.

I had booked a hotel near to Shin-Osaka station because I had really only planned Osaka as a leaping off point to Universal, Kyoto and Hiroshima. Later I decided not to do Hiroshima, and have a day in Osaka instead. Looking back, we probably should have booked something more central and paid a bit more. Saying that, our hotel was less than 5 mins walk to a subway station that got us wherever we wanted.
The hotel was called Hotel Claiton. The rooms were tiny, hardly enough room to put our suitcases on the floor. It also smelt of smoke. We did have Non Smoking rooms, but they still smelled, as did the lobby every time we walked in. I am a real anti-smoker and hate cigarette smoke smell, but we actaully got used to it each time we entered and it wasn't too bad.

We had arrived at the hotel at about 5pm, so we settled in, checked out a 100yen shop and found a little ramen place near the hotel. There was no English menus, but they did have pictures of the ramen. We also used Google Translate (what a wonderful app!) to see what each contained. We didn't work out much, but it ended up being really nice. It was very small but gave us the feel that we had actually eaten in a real Japanese ramen joint.



Our little ramen place.

 

[aussie shaz]

Day 6.

Today was our Osaka day. I hadn't thought there was enough to do there, so was going to do Hiroshima. But I decided we would be pretty tired by this stage and Hiroshima would have been a really long day. I would have liked to do Miyajima Island as well, but we couldn't have fitted in both.

First stop was Osaka castle. It was absolutely beautiful, and of course the sakuras just added to its beauty. Again it was packed there, but it didn't take long to purchase our entry ticket. You can either walk up all 7 levels, or take the elevator. Husband and 12yr old took the stairs. 15yr old and I took the elevator. By this stage, I couldn't face anothe set of stairs. They are everywhere, especially in every train station.
The view at the top was lovely. We did hire (free) a recorded information set and could press a button to find out what we were looking at. It was nice to see, but I didn't think there was all that much too interesting inside. Mainly just photos and display boards. I had hoped to see more real life stuff like costumes, weapons etc. 12yr old did dress up as a samurai, so that was fun.
The grounds were lovely, and the sight of the castle breathtaking.











After finishing at the castle, we headed into Dotonbori. This is the happening area of Osaka. Again, it was very, very busy. Lots of shops, signs, people etc.

















We headed towards a shrine that I'd read about, down a street called Hozenji Yokocho Alley. The kids did the little ritual of pouring water over the moss covered statues.



It was late afternoon and we had wanted to see all of the billboards light up, but we'd sort of seen what we wanted to. We decided to hang out along the canal and people watch until it was dark enough for the light-up. The bridge over the canal was full of people taking selfies. We filled in our time by trying to photobomb people's selfies without them realising. The kids also had a lot of fun waving to the people in tour boats along the canal and seeing how many waves they got back. Lots of ladies thought it was great, and took photos of the kids.
We nearly gave up a few times but we really wanted to see the Glico Man light up. We finally went and had some dinner, and went back to see Glico Man. Not sure it was worth the time and effort, but to go and not see him would have been a disappointment.


Selfies on the bridge

Every other billboard lit up before Glico Man finally did

 

[LivingforDisney]

Fantastic photos, but wow the crowds, don't think I could handle that.
Was it expensive over there?
What is the maid cafe? What happened when they dimmed the lights?

 

[aussie shaz]

Fantastic photos, but wow the crowds, don't think I could handle that.
Was it expensive over there?
What is the maid cafe? What happened when they dimmed the lights?

The cost of food etc isn't too bad. Probably similar to here. Accommodation was pretty expensive though. The Blossom was about $250 per night per room. The Hilton Tokyo Bay was about $400 per night for a Quad room.
Maid Cafes have young ladies dressed in maid type costumes and they were going to be doing some dance type act I think. The music was really loud and my 12yr old wasn't impressed at all. There's nothing wrong with maid cafes, it's nothing naughty, it's just not what my boys, including my husband, are into.