shaycamp21
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2005
I have been back from Japan for about 2 weeks and I finally found some time to start writing this trip report. On this trip it was my DH, myself and our youngest daughter who turned 12 a few days after we returned home which was a bonus since she qualified for child pricing which was under 12 for a lot of places.
Japan and Tokyo Disney Resort were a small part of an epic overall trip to Southeast Asia which started with 5 nights in Singapore then a 12 cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Spectrum of the Seas (at some point I will write a trip report for that for the RCCL board) with ports in Vietnam, Hong Kong (2 days in port here and we did do a day at Hong Kong Disneyland here is the trip report if anyone is interested :https://www.disboards.com/threads/hong-kong-disneyland-one-day-trip-report.3927241/), Taiwan and 2 ports in Japan: Kobe (we did a shore excursion to Kyoto here) and Shizumi, finally ending in Yokohama. We spent two nights in Tokyo post-cruise then 3 nights at the Ambassador Hotel with a day in each park before flying home to Toronto.
For the purpose of this trip report, I will focus on our time in Japan post cruise and honestly it just wasn’t enough time in Japan. We just loved the people, the culture, the food and as mentioned before by previous posters how clean it was. And the scenery was stunning. It really was one of our favourite places we visited in Asia (though I have to mention Singapore was beautiful and exceptionally clean too). We definitely need to go back and really spend some time exploring more of Japan. Though we’d have to go at another time of the year, as it was so unbelievably hot (and that was everywhere in Southeast Asia but I think the worst heat was in Taiwan). The heat just zaps and drains your energy so we weren’t able to do as much as we would have liked. I think Autumn or cherry blossom season would be incredible. One day, I have to go back, hopefully soon.
So I was really stressed about how we would get to Tokyo from the cruise port, a taxi would have been way too expensive and I really didn’t want to haul all our luggage (and we had A LOT) onto public transportation. Fortunately, Royal came out with a surprisingly budget friendly post cruise excursion to the Sensoji Temple with a drop off in Ginza which is where our hotel was. Getting off the ship we went through immigration fairly quickly (we had to do this for every port in Japan–they didn’t ask us any questions, just looked at our passports, the Customs form and Disembarkation card and we were free to go), and then met our tour group and guide. There were some people that had their luggage opened and searched. Our guide spoke English really quite well and shared some history about the Temple on the way, though we later found out that he was actually from China not Japan. I was actually quite surprised how little English was spoken in Japan compared to everywhere else we visited in Southeast Asia. However, the Japanese people were just lovely, so kind, friendly and helpful despite the language barrier.
The bus ride to Asakusa took about an hour and when we got off the bus there was a great view of the Tokyo Sky Tree which we did not have time to visit but at least we got to snap some good pics of. We had about an hour to explore the Temple area and it was just so bright and vibrant with the giant red lantern hanging from the Kaminarimon Gate and the 5 story Pagoda. You were allowed to take pictures everywhere except in the Gokyuden, the room inside the main prayer hall of the temple which was filled with beautiful and intricate golden objects. We also walked around Nakamise-dori Street which was filled with shops selling food and souvenirs–many of which were not open or had limited food available since it was still early (around 10 am). I am sorry though we didn’t at least try something from some of the places that were open. We ended up just grabbing some lattes (and matcha latte for DD) from a Starbucks on the way back to the bus and they were delicious, not if sure if it is because SB is just so much better in Japan or because we’d been deprived of good coffee for 2 weeks (the coffee on the ship was horrendous).
The bus dropped us off at the Ginza 6 mall which everyone was surprised about (many were thinking we’d be dropped off at a train station). Google maps said we were about 10 minutes away from our hotel but it was already crazy hot and with all our luggage we didn’t attempt to walk it. After waiting for a bit and trying to find a cab to hail that was big enough for the luggage we just ended up booking an Uber, which in Japan felt like a luxury experience with the drivers in suits and white gloves. It cost us $29 for a 10 minute Uber ride to our hotel so I can only imagine what it would have cost from the cruise port over an hour away.
We stayed at the Miramu Tokyo Ginza East, which is an apartment style hotel. It was nothing fancy but was super clean and was surprisingly spacious. They do have Pokemon themed rooms but since our daughter wasn’t a fan we didn’t bother to pay extra to stay in one. We stayed in a family loft apartment which had two single beds that were pushed together on the bottom and two bunks facing each other on the top (oh man were the beds hard–one of the only things I didn’t like about Japan). There was a banquette for seating and kitchen with cooktop, microwave and good-sized fridge. There were also cups, plates, cutlery and cooking utensils. You could also borrow small appliances like blenders and even rice cookers from the front desk but since we were only there for 2 nights we didn’t do any cooking, we basically only used the fridge. There was a shower room with a large tub and toiletries and toilet room (can I say how much I love those Japanese high tech toilets) there was also a mini sink with a soap pump in the toilet room and there also was an area outside with a large sink and mirror for getting ready. The hotel had all the amenities like slippers, toothbrushes etc.. to grab in the lobby area instead of in the room. There was also a self-serve laundry on the first floor.
It was still early when we arrived at the hotel around 11:30 am and check in wasn’t until 3 pm so they graciously offered to store our luggage. We were starving by this point and asked for recommendations where to go for sushi. The hotel staff spoke English very well but again neither were from Japan (one was from India and the other was from the Philippines). They recommended going to a place close to the Tsukiji Fish Market which was about a 20 minute walk. Sadly we didn’t get a chance to really explore the fish market by the time we walked to the restaurant in the blazing sun and we were drenched in sweat and just wanted to get out of the heat. We were a little lost on how to get a table at the restaurant (I wish I could remember the name) but a couple showed us that we had to write our name down on a list outside. We waited for about 15 minutes and were taken inside to our table. The waiter didn’t speak much English but we were able to communicate what we wanted by pointing to pictures on the menu. The menu was not in English but funnily enough there were English instructions on the back on the proper etiquette on how to eat sushi. We totally failed on the etiquette. Oh my goodness this was the best sushi of my life – so fresh and delicious the tuna especially, just melted in my mouth. We thought we had also ordered tempura shrimp and I guess technically they were but not what we were used to. They were tiny battered shrimp not cleaned with the heads, eyes, legs and shells attached but we did still eat most of it so not to be rude and they were tasty enough. It was quite reasonable around 6000 yen for two large platters of assorted sushi, twelve tuna rolls, the shrimp and iced green tea.
After lunch we walked to the fish market but it was super crowded so we decided to go back later but never found the time. Our DD was obsessed with going to a 7-Eleven after watching so many youtube videos about all the tasty food they had but the one we found wasn’t that well stocked. I was hoping to get some of those egg salad sandwiches for breakfast but they didn’t have any so we just grabbed some water and some snacks and headed back to our hotel. It was around 2:40 pm but we were able to get into our room. We were exhausted by this point from the heat and also from getting up so early to disembark from the ship so we ended up napping when we woke up, it was pouring rain (there was a Typhoon that was supposed to hit Osaka and we were starting to get some of the after effects). So we decided to do some laundry, we had quite a bit since there wasn’t a self-serve laundry on the ship. With the heat you’d sweat through your clothes so you couldn’t wear things again without washing. This ended up taking a lot longer than expected, washing was quick but the drying took forever (it was 300 yen to wash and dry but the dryer time was only 30 min) and in the end we just hung up a bunch of clothes around the room to finish drying.
By this point it was 8:30 pm and there was not much around where we were staying that was still open. It was a very quiet area. We remembered though there was this burger place we had passed on on our way to lunch that was open later so we went there. It was a cute diner style place and again we communicated our order by pointing to pictures on the menu. I had hoped to have had something more Japanese, since we were in Japan after all, but wow were these burgers good– probably one of the best I’ve ever had. Our meal here was quite pricey, costing a bit more than our lunch, but we really enjoyed it.
Since we had our daughter in tow we didn’t experience much nightlife on this trip, though honestly most days we were pretty exhausted after spending our day out in the heat. We headed back to our hotel and went to bed since we had to be up early to go to teamLab Planets. I will share more about going to teamLab and Shibuya tomorrow. That’s all for now.
Also I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Japan and Tokyo Disney Resort were a small part of an epic overall trip to Southeast Asia which started with 5 nights in Singapore then a 12 cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Spectrum of the Seas (at some point I will write a trip report for that for the RCCL board) with ports in Vietnam, Hong Kong (2 days in port here and we did do a day at Hong Kong Disneyland here is the trip report if anyone is interested :https://www.disboards.com/threads/hong-kong-disneyland-one-day-trip-report.3927241/), Taiwan and 2 ports in Japan: Kobe (we did a shore excursion to Kyoto here) and Shizumi, finally ending in Yokohama. We spent two nights in Tokyo post-cruise then 3 nights at the Ambassador Hotel with a day in each park before flying home to Toronto.
For the purpose of this trip report, I will focus on our time in Japan post cruise and honestly it just wasn’t enough time in Japan. We just loved the people, the culture, the food and as mentioned before by previous posters how clean it was. And the scenery was stunning. It really was one of our favourite places we visited in Asia (though I have to mention Singapore was beautiful and exceptionally clean too). We definitely need to go back and really spend some time exploring more of Japan. Though we’d have to go at another time of the year, as it was so unbelievably hot (and that was everywhere in Southeast Asia but I think the worst heat was in Taiwan). The heat just zaps and drains your energy so we weren’t able to do as much as we would have liked. I think Autumn or cherry blossom season would be incredible. One day, I have to go back, hopefully soon.
So I was really stressed about how we would get to Tokyo from the cruise port, a taxi would have been way too expensive and I really didn’t want to haul all our luggage (and we had A LOT) onto public transportation. Fortunately, Royal came out with a surprisingly budget friendly post cruise excursion to the Sensoji Temple with a drop off in Ginza which is where our hotel was. Getting off the ship we went through immigration fairly quickly (we had to do this for every port in Japan–they didn’t ask us any questions, just looked at our passports, the Customs form and Disembarkation card and we were free to go), and then met our tour group and guide. There were some people that had their luggage opened and searched. Our guide spoke English really quite well and shared some history about the Temple on the way, though we later found out that he was actually from China not Japan. I was actually quite surprised how little English was spoken in Japan compared to everywhere else we visited in Southeast Asia. However, the Japanese people were just lovely, so kind, friendly and helpful despite the language barrier.
The bus ride to Asakusa took about an hour and when we got off the bus there was a great view of the Tokyo Sky Tree which we did not have time to visit but at least we got to snap some good pics of. We had about an hour to explore the Temple area and it was just so bright and vibrant with the giant red lantern hanging from the Kaminarimon Gate and the 5 story Pagoda. You were allowed to take pictures everywhere except in the Gokyuden, the room inside the main prayer hall of the temple which was filled with beautiful and intricate golden objects. We also walked around Nakamise-dori Street which was filled with shops selling food and souvenirs–many of which were not open or had limited food available since it was still early (around 10 am). I am sorry though we didn’t at least try something from some of the places that were open. We ended up just grabbing some lattes (and matcha latte for DD) from a Starbucks on the way back to the bus and they were delicious, not if sure if it is because SB is just so much better in Japan or because we’d been deprived of good coffee for 2 weeks (the coffee on the ship was horrendous).
The bus dropped us off at the Ginza 6 mall which everyone was surprised about (many were thinking we’d be dropped off at a train station). Google maps said we were about 10 minutes away from our hotel but it was already crazy hot and with all our luggage we didn’t attempt to walk it. After waiting for a bit and trying to find a cab to hail that was big enough for the luggage we just ended up booking an Uber, which in Japan felt like a luxury experience with the drivers in suits and white gloves. It cost us $29 for a 10 minute Uber ride to our hotel so I can only imagine what it would have cost from the cruise port over an hour away.
We stayed at the Miramu Tokyo Ginza East, which is an apartment style hotel. It was nothing fancy but was super clean and was surprisingly spacious. They do have Pokemon themed rooms but since our daughter wasn’t a fan we didn’t bother to pay extra to stay in one. We stayed in a family loft apartment which had two single beds that were pushed together on the bottom and two bunks facing each other on the top (oh man were the beds hard–one of the only things I didn’t like about Japan). There was a banquette for seating and kitchen with cooktop, microwave and good-sized fridge. There were also cups, plates, cutlery and cooking utensils. You could also borrow small appliances like blenders and even rice cookers from the front desk but since we were only there for 2 nights we didn’t do any cooking, we basically only used the fridge. There was a shower room with a large tub and toiletries and toilet room (can I say how much I love those Japanese high tech toilets) there was also a mini sink with a soap pump in the toilet room and there also was an area outside with a large sink and mirror for getting ready. The hotel had all the amenities like slippers, toothbrushes etc.. to grab in the lobby area instead of in the room. There was also a self-serve laundry on the first floor.
It was still early when we arrived at the hotel around 11:30 am and check in wasn’t until 3 pm so they graciously offered to store our luggage. We were starving by this point and asked for recommendations where to go for sushi. The hotel staff spoke English very well but again neither were from Japan (one was from India and the other was from the Philippines). They recommended going to a place close to the Tsukiji Fish Market which was about a 20 minute walk. Sadly we didn’t get a chance to really explore the fish market by the time we walked to the restaurant in the blazing sun and we were drenched in sweat and just wanted to get out of the heat. We were a little lost on how to get a table at the restaurant (I wish I could remember the name) but a couple showed us that we had to write our name down on a list outside. We waited for about 15 minutes and were taken inside to our table. The waiter didn’t speak much English but we were able to communicate what we wanted by pointing to pictures on the menu. The menu was not in English but funnily enough there were English instructions on the back on the proper etiquette on how to eat sushi. We totally failed on the etiquette. Oh my goodness this was the best sushi of my life – so fresh and delicious the tuna especially, just melted in my mouth. We thought we had also ordered tempura shrimp and I guess technically they were but not what we were used to. They were tiny battered shrimp not cleaned with the heads, eyes, legs and shells attached but we did still eat most of it so not to be rude and they were tasty enough. It was quite reasonable around 6000 yen for two large platters of assorted sushi, twelve tuna rolls, the shrimp and iced green tea.
After lunch we walked to the fish market but it was super crowded so we decided to go back later but never found the time. Our DD was obsessed with going to a 7-Eleven after watching so many youtube videos about all the tasty food they had but the one we found wasn’t that well stocked. I was hoping to get some of those egg salad sandwiches for breakfast but they didn’t have any so we just grabbed some water and some snacks and headed back to our hotel. It was around 2:40 pm but we were able to get into our room. We were exhausted by this point from the heat and also from getting up so early to disembark from the ship so we ended up napping when we woke up, it was pouring rain (there was a Typhoon that was supposed to hit Osaka and we were starting to get some of the after effects). So we decided to do some laundry, we had quite a bit since there wasn’t a self-serve laundry on the ship. With the heat you’d sweat through your clothes so you couldn’t wear things again without washing. This ended up taking a lot longer than expected, washing was quick but the drying took forever (it was 300 yen to wash and dry but the dryer time was only 30 min) and in the end we just hung up a bunch of clothes around the room to finish drying.
By this point it was 8:30 pm and there was not much around where we were staying that was still open. It was a very quiet area. We remembered though there was this burger place we had passed on on our way to lunch that was open later so we went there. It was a cute diner style place and again we communicated our order by pointing to pictures on the menu. I had hoped to have had something more Japanese, since we were in Japan after all, but wow were these burgers good– probably one of the best I’ve ever had. Our meal here was quite pricey, costing a bit more than our lunch, but we really enjoyed it.
Since we had our daughter in tow we didn’t experience much nightlife on this trip, though honestly most days we were pretty exhausted after spending our day out in the heat. We headed back to our hotel and went to bed since we had to be up early to go to teamLab Planets. I will share more about going to teamLab and Shibuya tomorrow. That’s all for now.
Also I’d be happy to answer any questions.
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