I’ve spent four days/three nights in Tokyo from 2022/10/06 (Thu.) to 2022/10/09 (Sun.) together with a friend, exploring some famous and also lesser-known places of the metropolis.
Our classes on Thursday ended at 12:20, after which we went to Nagoya station and bought two-way Shinkansen tickets for Tokyo. Even though we applied a 20% student discount, it was still quite expensive, costing us around ¥20 000 (~€140) each. Paying the money was worth it though as this was my first Shinkansen trip during daytime and you could actually see the landscape breezing by.
The Shinkansen ride took 90 minutes and I spent the time writing up some posts and enjoying a lunch set I bought at Nagoya station.
We arrived at Akihabara station at around 17:00 as our hotel was there. Interestingly, we only paid like ¥20 000 for three nights and two adults for a prime location which was reeeeally cheap, probably because the country was still in lockdown at the time and almost no tourists came there. The hotel was called Hotaku btw, which makes a lot of sense for a hotel in Akihabara. Our room was more like an apartment with two twin-sized beds, a toilet, bathroom and even a small kitchen with a gas stove which we didn’t use.
After relaxing some time at the hotel, we headed out to explore Akihabara and to find something to eat. We didn’t explore any stores because it was already late and most businesses close at around 20:00, but it was still weird walking between ten-story buildings plastered with anime stuff and getting approached by girls in maid costumes.
The second day wasn’t that exciting. It was raining quite a lot so we spent most of the time inside anime merch stores, checking out figures and second-hand books and comics. We had a quick breakfast at Danny’s and roamed around Akihabara the whole day, me buying some weird food isekai manga I’ve yet to read. We also took a look at some doujin stores.
The third day began with us visiting the Tokyo Skytree, a tower standing at 634 meters which serves as a telecommunications broadcast and observation tower. Going up took over a minute, but the view was beautiful and really puts into proportion the enormous urban sprawl the Kantou region has undergone. Surprisingly, there even was a café and an area full of Gacha machines.
Our next stop was Ueno park where we just walked around aimlessly and enjoyed the landscape.
We also went to Shinagawa which is famous for its giant pedestrian crossing and bustling commercial districts.
Leaving Shinagawa, it was quite late already so we headed to our last stop which was Shinjuku. We dropped by to see the imperial gardens which unfortunately were closed at the time so we walked around and enjoyed the beautiful view of walls. We also went past the british embassy.
Shinjuku is one of the major nightlife and club districts of Tokyo. We roamed around the area for a bit and then decided to head off to a more quiet place as there were too many people and most of the bars were too touristy and expensive. We found a small Izakaya around 15 minutes by train away, had dinner and went back to our hotel.
Plans for the fourth and therefore last day were kind of short as we had our Shinkansen ride back booked for 18:00. We went to a Maid café to get lunch and spent the rest of the day exploring the Pokemon center and various smaller stores.
This concludes my little four-day trip to Tokyo. Even though it’s the largest metropolitan area in the world, it doesn’t feel that crowded apart from the trains and hotspots. In particular, the lack of car horns felt weird as people here generally don’t use it as freely as people back in Germany do.
If you enter a side alley, you can find lots of small, family-owned restaurants and pubs which are, in my opinion, way cooler than any of the fancy places in e.g. Shinjuku. We even got approached by some white-collar workers, striking up a conversation in English and even treating us to some Sashimi.
I might have spent a bit too much time in Akihabara as I really liked the stuff they had there, but I also visited lots of other places. If I were to go to Tokyo again, I’d probably check out more of the nightlife and maybe visit a club and talk to some locals.