And now for something completely different!

Steve visited Tokyo over 20 years ago, for a long weekend en-route to Australia on business, and found it to be the most difficult place he’d ever travelled to. We had our fingers crossed that the intervening years had made things easier for Western tourists who didn’t speak or understand a word of Japanese.

Our 5 hour Philippines Airlines flight from Cebu to Tokyo Narita had been booked months ago for a bargain price of about £120 each – so we splurged another £35 each on emergency exit seats when checking in, reserved seats A & C hoping that no-one would be in B, and had a most comfortable flight with an empty seat between us!

According to everything that Debbie had read Japanese immigration is a nightmare, you have to declare any prescription meds (probably true) and the authorities confiscate anything they consider too much or outside their rules. That turned out to be utter bollocks and we were admitted to the country with no hassle whatsoever and given a 90 day visa on arrival. With relatively little trouble we managed to purchase train tickets directly from the airport to our hotel, but we did have a 45 minute wait before setting off on the 1 hour journey to Kuramae station. After lugging Debbie’s bag up and down a few flights of steps we found that, as promised, our hotel APA Asakusa Kuramae Ekimae was directly outside exit A3.

APA hotels are huge – the company definitely, perhaps some of the hotels, but certainly not the rooms! We fully expected to have a tiny room in Tokyo though, especially at the price we were prepared to pay. Debbie could’ve blown all her IHG points on just 3 nights in a reasonable sized Tokyo hotel room but instead managed to use those points on 12 nights elsewhere – 5 nights in Kyoto, 3 nights in Shanghai (5*) and 4 nights in Hong Kong (5*) – much better value. Our hotel was fine – opposite the metro so easy to get around Tokyo, just 1Km or so from the lovely Asakusa area, and next door to a convenience store for snacks, beer and wine. The room was tiny but had everything including a tiny bath & electric wash toilets and only cost us about £80/night.

Expecting Japan, especially Tokyo, to totally blow our budget we were very pleasantly surprised to find beers in the 7 Eleven for £1.50 and – OMG – Debbie’s favourite cheap wine, Yellow Tail Chardonnay for only a fiver a bottle. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be so expensive after all.

We had a stay of 4 nights and 3 full days booked but no firm plans other than Sumo on day 3 – let’s just see how we feel and go with the flow. We couldn’t help comparing Tokyo to London when looking at areas and trying to work out where to visit. Probably like any big city – where’s the Oxford Street, Knightsbridge, Marylebone High Street, South Bank or Chiswick equivalent?

Shinjuku

Shinjuku was apparantly a must-see – Tokyo’s answer to Leicester Square and Soho – so we went on our first full day in the pissing rain, navigating the Tokyo subway fairly successfully and managing to find our way, eventually, out of the HUGE Shinjuku station. We tried to purchase the 3-day metro pass (bargain at £7.50) but were unable to without our passports. Starving, and still raining hard, we opted to stay underground in a shopping mall for lunch and had our first success with our menu translator apps. Bizarre that ordering is done on an iPad but there’s no English language option. On exiting into the great outdoors of Shinjuku – yup, it was just like Leicester Square. Billboards, tat, over-priced eateries and all manner of folk looking to part you from your money – including lines of young ladies dressed up as maids (the mind boggles!) We went in search the famous Golden Gai – a small area of narrow alleys with tiny bars seating no more than 6-8 punters – but we were too early, this was very much an evening venue. The charmingly named Piss Alley was actually far more appealing – a single narrow street packed with small bars serving Yakatori (skewers).

Asakusa

Our local neighbourhood, just one stop on the metro from our hotel, and a more traditional side of Tokyo than the bright lights and billboards of Shinjuka, and that could probably be compared to Notting Hill. It turned out that our Sunday morning wander co-incided with Sanja Matsuri, Tokyo’s biggest and most lively Shinto festival. Centred around the spectacular Senso-ji temple, dozens of teams carry ornate shrines through the streets, chanting and bouncing energetically to please the gods. The teams wear matching happi coats (VERY short kimono-style jackets), often with little else, which is rather unbecoming on some older blokes! The streets became log-jammed with multiple teams/shrines/priests-on-horses and police trying to control it all while the music played and the energy infected everyone around – ‘traditional meets rowdy’, despite its sacred roots the festival had a carnival-like vibe and was an amazing sight to witness. 

The temple was magnificent, even more so at night without the crowds. We didn’t dare join the fortune unwrapping, instead partaking in the street food offerings before going in search of Hat Coffee – an Asakusa gem specialising in Latte art and located down an anonymous residential street, Our names went on the waiting list and the IT told us when we’d made it to the front of the queue 30 minutes or so later. Hat Coffee specialise in custom 2D and 3D designs from your photos, so we challenged them to create masterpieces of Bronte in a coffee cup. When it was our turn we were invited to the counter to watch and/or film the process, and the results will probably be forever etched in our memories, Our beautiful Guide Dog was immortalised perfectly and brilliantly in latte foam and we struggled to actually drink the most expensive coffees we’d ever purchased. Not too extortionate at £7.50 each for sheer genius, and the photos have been sent to just about everyone who knows the pup, including his Guide Dog Owner (GDO) who apparently loves all things Japanese…

Tsukiji Fish Market

We toyed with a tour to the daily tuna auction but couldn’t bring ourselves to get up at 4am or pay over £150 each (plus taxi to get there as Tokyo public transport doesn’t start that early), so instead took a more leisurely trip to the old fish market. Now just a retail market since the wholesale operation moved to Toyosu in 2018, Tsukiji outer market was fabulous. Vendors sell all manner of fish and other premium Japanese food/drink, it was a bit like Borough Market on steroids. Steve wanted sushi and after a few laps of the market he identified THE stall to buy it from – the one with a very long queue, a slick operation and the most beautiful looking tuna. He opted for the JPY 3,000 selection (just over £15) – 6 generous pieces of prime tuna in ‘extra fatty’, ‘fatty’ and ‘lean’ grades on vinegared rice and served beautifully with soy, wasabi and a cup of green tea. He declared the sushi delicious but with the palest extra fatty grade being somewhat of an acquired taste. Debbie doesn’t do raw fish, not even smoked salmon, but bravely tried the tiniest bit – she appreciated the excellent quality but wouldn’t choose to eat any more. Her chosen indulgence was Wagyu Beef, and after perusing the stalls offering it and discounting the even more expensive Kobe beef vendors, settled on one place offering a small skewer of 3x A5 grade Wagyu cubes for JPY 3,300 (a little over £17). Very marbled with fat, probably with more fat than lean, there was a chance she wouldn’t like the Wagyu as she’s rather phobic about fat on meat – but the chef took such care in cooking this little morsel perfectly, basting in its own fat and juices, that the fat dissolved into the meat giving it the distinctive buttery texture and flavour for which Wagyu is so prized. OH MY GOD! We will have to try Wagyu or even Kobe again while we are in Japan, but probably at less of a high-priced tourist trap. And it although it was still been before 11am we had to do a Sake tasting flight too…..

Akihabara – the electrical and animae district – like Tottenham Court Road. We purchased an HDMI cable for less than £3, so that we can connect our laptops to in-room TVs for video calls and streaming services, marvelled at more young ladies dressed in maids outfits, passed the 7 storey sex-toy shop and escaped back to the normality of Asakusa!

Ginza – Debbie insisted that we needed to have a wander down the Knightsbridge of Tokyo! The collection of very high rise luxury shops was amazing, and the Apple shop was gold, but we resisted purchasing anything. There’s no room in our bags at the moment.

Sumo

The national sport of Japan, with 6 tournaments per year of which 3 are in Tokyo. As luck would have it, the Tokyo event was happening during our stay and Debbie ascertained many months ago how to get tickets. So, while we were back in the UK and on our wedding anniversary she set the alarm for 01.45 so that she could be ready online for 02.00 (10.00 Tokyo time) when they went on sale. It was worse than getting Glastonbury tickets, and she’d pretty much given up hope when at around 04.00 she was successful. We went for the relatively cheap seats, £35 each, and were to collect the tickets from any 7 Eleven once in Japan, so all set for 19th May. Doors open at 09.00 and there are preliminary/junior matches all morning, but the real action doesn’t start until around 15.00 so we opted to arrive then. Crowds lined the streets, awaiting the arrival of their favourites and screaming when they turned up – it was a bit like being at the FA Cup Final and waiting for the team coaches to pull up and players alight. But at Wembley the players acknowledge the fans – top flight sumo wrestlers remain aloof, perhaps ‘in the zone’, as they arrive in their dressing gowns and flip flops (some with a bag and a packed lunch, others just strut or waddle past without being encumbered by anything). These guys are huge – usually 6’3″ or taller (unusual as Japanese men are generally much shorter) and typically 25 stone plus (genetics or ‘training’?). Some are huge but relatively muscular, others a little more ‘normal’ in size, but most are just VERY fat giants. Sumo champions can earn well in excess of $1 million per year in salary, prize money and sponsorship so its a really big deal.

The bouts themselves involve a big build up, pomp and ceremony, mind games, ceremonial washing, throwing salt into the clay ring before the wrestlers crouch and go into battle. It’s all over very quickly, often a matter of just 2-3 seconds, on rare occasions more than 30 seconds, until one wrestler is forced out of the ring or on to the floor. Each wrestler only has 1 bout per day – nice work if you can get it! The winner of each bout gets 1 point, and the contestant with the most points at the end of the 14 day tournament wins. As the afternoon progressed, the more accomplished and famous wrestlers entered the ring – obvious from (1) the amount of cheering and (2) the number of sponsorship pennants being paraded. It was great to have been able to experience Sumo 🙂

Transport

An almost unfathomable system of underground (Metro) and Overground (Japan Rail) covers pretty much anywhere that we wanted to go. Instead of trying to decipher the system we simply used Google Maps which told us exactly what to do and where to go (including platform and exit numbers). Japanese trains are punctual, so if there was a train arriving on Platform 1 at 15.12 and we were due to get on a train at that time, we just got on it as it WOULD be the right one. We loaded the Suica card (a bit like Oyster) onto our phones, added some cash via Apple Pay, and just tapped in and out at each station. Incredibly convenient and good value compared to London, we spent less than £10 each in 4 days and used the trains quite a lot.

Food

We ticked a lot off our Japanese food bingo card despite hardly any menus being available in English – thank god for the Apps that take photos and translate. Sushi, Wagyu, Gyoza, Ramen – tick. No sign of Katsu yet though. We found a fabulous ramen shop near the temple in Asaksua thanks to Tripadvisor, stumbled across a busy tapas-style place with some unmentionable ingredients when most places were closing at 8pm (the Japanese eat early), egg salad sarnies from 7 Eleven are legendary and worth the hype, honestly. We didn’t pay more than £30 total for dinner, including a beer or 2, but we didn’t eat anywhere fancy. Nevertheless, at this level, Tokyo is far less expensive than London.

Conclusion on Tokyo – some really great experiences made it a memorable stay. Would we say it’s a must-visit destination? Probably not, but let’s see how we feel after we’ve experienced some other places in Japan……