Tokyo - what should i do there?

i like the yanaka recommendation.

maybe instead of walking around shinjuku, just go out to yokohama too imho

yokohama rules

i went this summer and was staying in ebina with my friend, go to the mountains!!! and chigasaki!!! or wherever idk it was all great

yeah, it was the dashi/broth. I have found even if they eat fish (and not tonkotsu o course), it's still a little too in depth for some vegetarians. The ones that do totally vegetarian, I recall only a small handful, are online though.

― Yerac, Friday, January 10, 2020 1:08 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ya doing vegan in japan was hard. i kind of accepted that i was probably getting some fish ingredients in certain things. i bought peanuts at a 7-11 and later looked at the ingredients with my translator app and it had butter oil? likewise went to a curry place and got natto which looking back probably had fish ingredients in it. we did manage to find a natural foods kind of shop in chigasaki that had some explicitly vegan stuff, but i gather its not a v common thing in japan. the pickled plum onigiri from family mart are vegan tho and that was my favorite snack food of all.

i had a couple of buddhist vegetarian meals they do at the temples (shojin ryori) served to the public. I am not vegan or vegetarian but they seemed mostly vegan.

Friend of mine sent me this listing for vegetarian/vegan places when I was going there, might be useful?

https://www.happycow.net/asia/japan/tokyo/?sort=highest-rated

Shojin Ryouri is strictly vegan, there are some places to go in Tokyo to eat it but not cheaply like you can in Kyoto. Worth sealing out though because it is both a high point of Japanese cuisine and of vegan food in general.

Even if you aren’t vegetarian, if you are eating out the time in japan it can be hard to get a big pile of veggies on your plate unless you work at it.

yeah and veggies and fruits are pricey in the supermarkets. we ate a lot of cabbage and bananas but the rest were unreasonable

The suggestion of onigiri above is decent too; even if you’re really stuck for something snacky every 7-11 has a good selection of them and many are vegan/vegetarian.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p720x720/66700839_2371284109811861_7963578461589602304_o.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_ohc=ygfhYgKJiDMAQlfBh7s0vEuRbWh5CxqjW3PPgngLqdoZmFsyXuaor8hdA&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&_nc_tp=1&oh=d3f6ed99b9bf2921cbd896341924de9b&oe=5E8EF5E2

this right here

iirc the ones from 7-11 use some fish ingredient even in the nominally fish-less ones

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p720x720/66582574_2371302513143354_6762449294864678912_o.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=IHDqdp59c6IAQmZMU69wUEmazED5sb5dhUfPpTxxF4uXvwHa-ws-0oC1g&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&_nc_tp=1&oh=60b7951e3e03fbb47c237acf27b2d847&oe=5EAD0797

this was the breakfast at my hotel lobby one morning, it was hella good

Ohitashi like that is one of the best ways to get your greens and most supermarkets will have premade stuff. I’ll often buy a tray of that and sashimi for a quick lunch or dinner.

It’s almost always made with katsuodashi (bonito stock).

Many XPs - Yeah Shinjuku is kinda disparate and even a bit crappy unless you know where you're going. If you want to wander there are more interesting built-up, central places like Akihabara, Ginza or Shibuya or Shiodome as I mentioned earlier, the Golden Gai area is fun but not really if you have kids.

If you want to check out Yanaka, take the Yamanote line to Nippori station, once out of the station go left and up the steps to the big cemetery, trust me it's cool, once you've wandered through that you can continue heading south through Yanaka down to Ueno and the park.

touching on tokyo... I finally had natto for the first time yesterday. It was good! It tasted a little like blue cheese to me.

I just booked a room in Kanda for my trip there in a couple of months. There’s a Jiro nearby!

ok, you all have officially put Yanaka on the list.

and i guess i should consider Yokohama.

i was thinking taking the bullet train somewhere so we can experience it / see some scenery flying by / spend a few hours in another town would be cool. but a friend who has been there said (paraphrasing) "it is cool but ultimately you guys will be caught up in the otherwordliness everyday anyway" and making a special trip for the train might not be the best way to spend a day.

one thing i know for sure is it'd need to be a day trip. i don't want to stay overnight somewhere.

thoughts? would Yokohama be a good call here?

I have not been but everyone on Terrace House goes on dates there.

you get to Yokohama on the Tokyo metro, so getting there is no big deal. Depending on where you’re staying it’s closer than parts of Tokyo itself.

never been to yokohama but it has been recommended a lot, esp by tokyo residents. but as a tourist, the things it's famous for (chinatown, ferris wheel, western architecture) maybe don't have the same appeal since I can easily access similar stuff in the US? I'm sure there's more tho since everyone seems to love it.

I've done nikko and kitakamakura day trips, both v nice. oze national park is maybe too far for a day trip but maybe an option if you start real early.

Yokohama's waterfront is nicer than any of Tokyo's. e.g. Odaiba is fine but you can stroll from Yokohama Chinatown to the ferris wheel and it's super nice. Tokyo by contrast seems to hide its waterfronts

If you're going to Yokohama you could carry on a little bit further and go visit Yasujirō Ozu's gravesite at Engakuji Temple in Kamakura, sure the kids would love that! :)

https://vimeo.com/158739118

Yeah the bullet trains are a great service but quite boring to ride - tunnel, flash of town, tunnel, flash of town for lots of it. Plenty of interesting things to see but that is probably just as good from a regular train. Exception being the Tokyo-Kyoto train (is it the Tokaido?) with the view of Fuji san to the north, a cliche but still OMG when you see it.
Another great option is Takaosan which is about an hour west of Shinjuku by train - cool train ride, sweet little town and then either a hike or a cable railway to the top of Mt Takao and the temples up there. You can take a long downhill walk on the trails through the forests, absolute magic.

Went there with the wife and our 9 year old last Spring. Robot cafe is interesting in a raggedy late 90’s Flaming Lips concert sort of way, but it is a tourist trap with bad food. It’s not bad, mind you, but it is the one thing I would skip if I had a do-over.

Teamlab is amazing, get there as early as possible. Even if you buy your tix in advance, the line is crazy long to get in and some of the rooms may have a long line once you get in.

We did an owl cafe which was cool. It is a chill thing to do with the kids.

The 7-11’s are great and they have very good prepackaged food if you need a snack.

Don’t try to cram in too much when traveling with kids. I hyperplanned everyday and towards the wnd of the trip everybody was fried.

thank u, good insights ^

i swear, everyone who has been to Tokyo talks about (a) the 7-11s, and (b) the toilets

Lawson>>>>>7-11

Don’t try to cram in too much when traveling with kids. I hyperplanned everyday and towards the wnd of the trip everybody was fried.

^^second this, and agree that the bullet train is really not all that worth it unless you're going further out like Kyoto.

Just went to Tokyo in November and these were what my 12 year old daughter enjoyed the most:

- eating all kinds of cute and colourful food in Harajuku: crepes, rainbow grilled cheese, animal ice creams.

- exploring temples in Kamakura. Favourites were Hokokuji which has a bamboo grove that's like a mini-version of Kyoto's Arashiyama grove, and Kotoku-in aka the Great Buddha temple (you can go inside the giant Buddha!)

- Teamlab Borderless - echoing everyone's advice to get there super early, and even though there's like a million interesting things to see the moment you enter, try to head straight to the floating nest exhibit before the queue gets super long. We ended up spending 4.5 hours in total in there.

- the toy section in Akihabara's massive Yodobashi Camera.

- Ueno Park - so many museums, just pick one. And since you guys are there in March/April, it'll also be a great place to see sakura (cherry blossoms).

Other tips:
- do check out tokyocheapo.com to see if there are any small markets/events you can go to in whichever area you're visiting - we went to a couple and just ate so much good, cheap, street food. great places to find small souvenirs/toys too.

- If you can get time away from the kids, Gen Yamamoto is an incredible bar/cocktail experience.

- Another day-trip option might be Hakone - the lake and the open air art museum there were amazing, although I do recommend staying overnight, just because being able to stay in a ryokan with an onsen (hot springs) was incredible. Do check if the local transport links like the cable car and local trains are working though - a lot of them were down on my last trip due to post-typhoon damage.

yeah, i like lawson over 7-11. and probably FamilyMart over 7-11. I don't recall anything super special about the bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo to make it an item unless you are super into trains.

The Kawaii Monster Cafe in Harajuku was good fun (and the food wasn't bad either), but ymmv depending on your Kyary Pamyu Pamyu fandom level.

Seconding Kamakura for an out-of-town trip (although Takaosan sounds good too). It's almost a mini-Kyoto an hour away from Tokyo, and the big golden Buddha is a sight to see (and go inside too, if it's open).

xpost

Fun food recs, though a lot of these places will involve some queueing unless you go early or at odd hours (like 3pm). Some branches are more popular than others as well.

- Fluffy pancakes: https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/restaurants/best-fluffy-pancakes-in-tokyo
- Gigantic bowls of udon at TsuruTonTan in Ginza: https://matcha-jp.com/en/5461
- If you eat meat, gyukatsu or deepfried beef was easily the best meal I've had in Japan: https://www.gyukatsu-motomura.com/en/

Apart from those, it's fairly easy to get good tempura, ramen, udon, soba, sushi etc anywhere. In three trips to Japan, I think I've only had a couple of legitimately bad food experiences and it was always at one of those tourist trap restaurants that's just outside a popular temple or something.

For mobile coverage, getting a pocket wifi is worth it... you don't need a SIM card, can connect to 4-5 devices, coverage is great, and way cheaper than roaming. You can rent them at the airport.

Also Google Maps is your best friend. Aside from very good directions, it will inform you of train delays and even tell you which platforms / coach car for you to board or get off, so that you won't accidentally go out at the wrong exit (which happens often at the bigger stations).

Yeah, the phrase - kono chizu de ima dokoni imasu ka - served me well.

If you get lost though, people, in my experience, were super kind. A young student girl walked us all the way from the rear of the Nanzen-Ji temple to the front, which was right out of her path. An older gentleman took us to the gate at Tsukiji Market at 4am, he was leaving a conbini and already heading in the opposite direction, probably put a good 20 mins on his morning walk.

I went to Kamakura for the beaches, which were not that great (even in July) but my kids wanted to say they'd touched the Pacific Ocean. The monorail getting there was very cool though, like a roller coaster kinda!

I'm trying to figure out the best non-flying way from Kyoto to Seoul. I may end up flying but the other possibilities are intriguing too.

Lawson>>>>>7-11

and natural lawson is the god tier konbini store

also, missed some vegan discussion. it's tough to find things but not impossible.

there are vegan cafes here-and-there. komenoko (米の子) in suginami and nezunoya (根津の谷) in bunkyou are both v much worth a stop if you're nearby.

for vegan ramen, try chabuzen (薬膳食堂ちゃぶ膳) in setagaya or t's tan tan in tokyo station. both quite good.

and quality is generally so high across the board, that ime, it's hard to strike out just tying out random spots that look good.

hi, most recent thread reviver here ... our trip is starting to take shape.

we arrive on a Thursday (2/27), will just chill / stay close to home on Friday. Saturday and Sunday are open.

Monday (3/2) we have tix to the Ghibli museum.

Tuesday is open.

Wednesday/Thursday (3/4-5) are Disneyland and Disneysea.

Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon open. We leave Tuesday (3/10).

I've compiled this entire thread into one document and am trying to figure out what else to do. I'm sure I'll be back with questions.

Also, I missed early on that Yerac asked where we're staying. It's the Hotel Sunroute, very very close to Shinjuku station: https://sunrouteplazashinjuku.jp/ (although we will move over to a Disney hotel for our Disney nights.)

I am also hoping to see live music at least one night! I even FB messaged Leo Takami and he wrote me back and said he might have a gig on 3/4 ... one of my Disney nights. :(

More soon ...

im also headed to tokyo for 4 days in march, so thanks everyone for bumping this thread, I've found some great suggestions reading it.

our trip seems to be trending in a bad direction w/r/t postponement because of coronavirus. :(

i recognize that our chances of having any trouble are very slim, but my wife has a chronic disease (she is no immuno-compromised at the moment), we have two kids in tow, museums are starting to close for the next few weeks, Disneyland Shanghai and Hong Kong are already closed (so would Tokyo be next?), travel advisory just moved from level 1 to level 2 ... things are starting to add up.

if anyone has any thoughts, i'm all ears.

I'm going there in early April, and won't change my plans unless my flight is cancelled. But I'm going solo and have no chronic diseases.

just to close the loop, we delayed our trip at the last second. now going in late September / early October.

they announced Disneyland and DisneySea closures when we would've been on the plane heading that way.

i feel very fortunate with how the timing worked out and look forward to going later this year.

Definitely for the best. It looks like I’ll have to postpone my own trip from late April to October.

our flights are cancelled with a decent chance of rebooking, with a further decent chance in turn of cancellation as far as i can tell

Oh! I stayed at the Sunroute Plaza on my first trip there, so sorry that it's having to be delayed :(

how did you like it, Maresn3st? we just moved our March reservation there to September.

It was only one night but if memory serves it was perfectly decent.

However, if you can be arsed and the money is the same I would stay here, lovely hotel in an interesting area, great views because it's the top 15 floors of a tower, similar to the famous Park Hyatt. Shinjuku is very central but boy it's hectic, Shidome/Shimbashi is much more chill.

https://parkhoteltokyo.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBgHhEskLMU

You could check out the Ghibli Clock and the Nakagin Capsule Tower.

You can do monthly rentals in the Nakagin capsule tower which I might do next time I long stay in Tokyo.