Tag: Shinjuku

A 2 Day Tokyo Itinerary For The Entire Family

This is the first time that my mom and my younger siblings visited Tokyo, so naturally, I brought them to the most touristy spots in the city.

DAY 1

Shibuya at 10 AM

Our first stop was Shibuya, where we went to see the Hachiko Statue and witnessed a less crowded Shibuya Crossing (this was a Sunday).

  • Hatchiko’s statue is right outside the Shibuya Station. Find the exit that says, “Hachiko Square.”
  • If your hotel doesn’t have free breakfast, get breakfast from Starbucks. There you’ll have a better view of the crossing.

There used to be a door at the back, of the building, where you could get into Starbucks without passing the barista’s counter, but when we tried, it was closed off. So you might not get away with going inside Starbucks without buying anything, because there will literally be a line the moment you go inside the main door. Won’t hurt to try.

  • The crossing, on a Sunday, will start to get crowded at noon so stick around for that if you like.
  • You can also see a view of the crossing from Shibuya Station, although you’ll be seeing it from a farther distance.

The Shibuya Crossing is always better at night, but we chose to get this over with early 🙂

Hachiko Statue Shibuya Tokyo

St. Ignacius Catholic Church in Chiyoda

  • Take the Ginza line from the Shibuya Station to the Akasaka-mitsuke Station, after which take the Marunouchi line to the Yotsuya Station.
  • Once outside the Yotsuya station, turn left.
  • The English mass is at 12:00 noon.
  • There’s a cafeteria, by the church, serving Filipino food!

Sensō-ji Temple

  • If you choose to skip the church, take the Ginza line from the Shibuya Station to the Asakusa Station
  • There’s immediate access from the Asakusa Station into the Temple’s surrounding vicinity. However, I advise that you follow the main road instead. This way you can see the first gate, although it can get crowded.
The Kaminarimon Senso-ji Temple
The First Gate – or more popularly nown as The Kaminarimon
Hōzōmon Entrance at Senso-ji Temple
The Second Gate or the Hōzōmon

 

  • The women in the Kimonos are mostly tourists themselves, renting from the near-by photo studio. Most of the time, they’re willing to pose for photos, so grab every opportunity.

 

Girls in Kimono in Senso-ji Temple

 

My family didn’t really feel the need to bump elbows with other tourists in order to actually see the temple. So they chose to just take pictures by the gates and move on. As for me, I already saw the temple itself, during my first visit to Japan, so I ran along with them. This gave us more time to take a look at the stalls surrounding the area.

 

Sensoji Temple Tokyo Japan

 

  • There’s a great view of the Tokyo Skytree in this area, so if you don’t feel like getting up close and personal, you can take good photos here.

 

Tokyo Sky Tree Sensoji TempleEntrance to Senso-ji Temple

 

 

Ginza Street

  • Go back to the Asakusa Station and use the Ginza line to go to, you guessed it, Ginza Station.
  • Take pictures! Yay!

They close off the entire street during weekends, because of the crowd. It’s quite entertaining -and envious- to see many of them carrying a bunch of paper bags from luxury brands. 

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Ginza Tokyo Japan
Check my mama out

Tokyo Tower

  • From the Ginza Station take the Hibiya line to Kamiyacho Station
  • Once outside the station, turn left then you’ll see a skywalk.
  • Go up the skywalk to get this view

I believe that there’s a nearer station, but I’m not entirely sure. In any case, we just wanted a picture from the outside, so this is the station we arrived at.

tokyo tower japan
Excuse the vanity, but I have no better (edited) picture of the tower as of this writing. I could edit, but it’ll take long because my laptop is SUPER SLOW.
Tokyo Tower Japan
The view from the skywalk

 

At 5 p.m. we decided to go back to the hotel, but if you want, you can put either Akihabara or Harajuku on the list. The former we did the night before. That’s the only place we were able to go to, because we travelled from Hamamatsu to Tokyo from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and waited till 3 for hotel check-in. The latter, we skipped entirely.

 

Akihabara at Night Tokyo Japan
Also, it was raining so we went home early 😦

DAY 2

Tokyo Disney Sea!

Hey, it’s for the family right? lol.

  • Make sure you get yourself on the Keiyo Line to the Maihama Station. Outside the Maihama Station, is Disney’s own train station that gives you access to both Disneyland and Disney Sea.
  • OR you could also ride on the Tokyo Disney Resort Bus from the Shinjuku Expressway Bus Terminal.
  • Best rides in Disney Sea:
    • Journey to the Center of the Earth
    • Tower of Terror
    • Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull
    • Raging Spirits
    • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

More pictures of Disney Sea here.

Thanks for finishing through this itinerary! Hope I helped 🙂 Feel free to comment, below, all the places that I missed out on!

Good wagyu and a new experience in Shinjuku, Tokyo? 

Address: Japan, 〒160-0021 Tokyo, 新宿区Kabukicho, 1 Chome−２６−３
Price range: 90-400 JPY
Rate on Yelp: 5 stars
Standing

Walking around Shinjuku with five hungry people who are depending on your choice of restaurant, but having no idea where to eat, is a situation you do not want to be in.

I created an opportunity for my family to grind my gears that one afternoon. After a long day of walking and going from one district to another, I found myself getting badgered with questions like “where are we eating?” “which restaurant?” “didn’t you search for it beforehand?” I should have, but I didn’t know which district we’d find ourselves last or if my family would be interested in wagyu. So there was really no point to look for a restaurant if I didn’t know where we’d end up in.

Finally, I gave in. I turned on my mobile data despite knowing that I would be paying 599 PHP once I came back home (I already saw my bill – it’s insane). I opened Yelp, the famous business locator app that I previously gave no mind until I met my now boyfriend. He uses it like a bible to find the best and cheapest restaurants in town.

I eventually found Jirōmaru, a Yakiniku place that only had 2 Japanese Yen signs next to its name. It was the cheapest around. Good reviews, only 0.6 kilometers from where we were standing. “Let’s check it out!”

I almost walked past it while I was looking at google maps. I thought that the front of the restaurant would be wide and conspicuously placed in between other establishments. Nope. The front was just about two and a half meters wide with two doors on each side of the facade. One door was for the customers to get into, while the other was for the chefs. As I peeked into the door I found myself looking at a line. This is a standing restaurant! One of the chefs firmly pointed that out when he saw us waiting and looking clueless about these kinds of places. My mom was not happy with this information.

Jiromaru-restaurant-review

Much to my family’s reluctance, we stood outside for about 5 minutes before half of our group was allowed to go in. We had to wait for one couple to finish up because the space was that limited. I believe there were only about 6 small grills out on the counter. Three of us made our way to the grill that had just been cleared by the couple, while the other two waited for another 10 minutes before they could come in. My brother chose to eat at McDonald’s.

IMG_4165

As we were facing the area where the chefs stand, I noticed the small wooden blocks (bars?) hanging on the walls. Japanese characters were written on them, with numbers at the bottom of each bar. That’s how they displayed the menu, each wooden bar showed a part of meat together with its price. How nice. We couldn’t understand a single word.

where-to-find-cheap-wagyu-in-tokyo

Thankfully, the chefs spoke good English. So they asked us if we’d like for them to pick their favorites for us. We said yes, and left everything entirely up to them. While the orders kept coming, with seemingly no sign of stopping, I thought that maybe letting them decide wasn’t such a good idea. I wondered to myself if we’d end up paying a fortune after dinner. The prices on the menu ranged from 100 to 400 JPY, which isn’t so bad compared to other sit-down (?) restaurants that offer wagyu. But small plate orders such as what were getting can add up. 

IMG_4178

True enough, our orders did add up to an amount I’d rather not disclose because it can speak of either two things: one, is that my family and I CAN EAT; or two, we got ripped off. The more that I think about it now, the more convinced I am of the latter.

We should have checked the bill more closely. Although, we could have probably paid for each slice of wagyu. I just checked the bill from another restaurant that we ate in on our last day in Tokyo, and one plate of wagyu was 900 JPY. I don’t know! I wasn’t briefed before going inside Jirōmaru.

Be that as it may, at least the food was far from disappointing. And even though I hate reviewing food (because I don’t know how), I’m going to list down a few thoughts:

  • The meat exploded like water, bursting from a dam, inside my mouth.
  • Scratch water and replace it with melted butter.
  • Wagyu does melt like butter.
  • The meat didn’t need any seasoning.
  • It was that flavorful.
  • Their sauce didn’t really do anything to the meat. Meaning, no added flavor.
  • Or maybe I’ve just forgotten.
  • Good thing the meat was that flavorful.
  • There’s a lot of rice in a small bowl.
  • Next time count the plates.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The food was great at Jirōmaru, as proven by the countless five star ratings on Yelp. Trying a standing restaurant, and possibly having been fooled into paying more for food, was also a first for me which I may not rate as a five star experience. But both are great to add to the imaginary travel portfolio! That’s not to say that I have never been fooled while travelling before, just not with food in particular. But every traveller must go through these things, otherwise, what fun stories would there be to tell? So cheers to great wagyu and new experiences in Tokyo. May our future travels introduce us to more food minus the problems. 🍺🎉

Hotel Review: The APA Hotel (Higashi Shinjuku)

Address: Shinjuku-ku Kabukicho 2-19-14
No. of nights: May 13 – May 16 (3 nights)
No. of rooms: 3 rooms
Rate per night per room: 10,333.33 JPY or 4,535.97 PHP

Wifi: yes
Breakfast NOT included
Parking space not available.

It’s not news to anyone that Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. So it came as a surprise to me that we were able to find a hotel for only 4,535 pesos a night.

The first time I visited Japan, we stayed in the Hilton Hotel, which offered big spacious rooms befitting for the five star hotel. The rooms at APA are undoubtedly the complete opposite of spacious, but notably far from being uncomfortable.

the room in APA Hotel in Higashi Shinjuku

Cons
To tell you honestly, I had a few complaints regarding the size of the room the first time I saw it.

  • The bed was pinned to the walls so whenever the person closest to it had to get out of bed, she had to either wake the person next to her or step over her (or roll over her, for people who have no regard for others lol).
  • I kept pointing out that there was no space to put our bags in, so I put mine right in the middle of the room door and the bathroom door. Everytime we came inside the room or went out the bathroom, we had to step over my medium sized luggage.
  • I kept bumping my smallest toes on the chair, the toilet bowl, or anything that was in the way really – which meant everything. Eventually though, I got used to the size.

A review of the APA Hotel in Higashi Shinjuku

Pros
The APA Hotel rooms do grow on you until you learn to love it. There are also a few things that I enjoyed about the hotel and my stay.

  • It was so close to the Higashi Shinjuku station, that walking to the hotel wasn’t a problem. There are also two other APA hotels in the area, one of which was so close to our hotel that the staff there led us to the right one.
  • Even though Booking.com already mentioned that the bed would be a semi-double (one for each room), it was still so roomy for both me and my sister. My brother was the only one who complained because he had to share the bed with our uncle, whom he isn’t so close with.
  • The room comes with all the necessities, like mugs with free coffee and tea packs, free bottle of water, a coffee pot, a mini fridge – all that jazz. Things you’d rarely find in a 4,500 PHP/night room in the Philippines.
  • The bathrooms come with a tub designed to be compact but efficient. The toilet bowl is a Toto Bowl too! That’s something that I still consider as fancy for a 4,500 PHP/night room.
  • The cleaning staff restocks the toiletries everyday. I didn’t even know there would be free toothbrushes, shaving kits, and combs.
  • Check in and check out were easy. We just had to drop our keys in a box upon check out. I know that’s what they do in a lot of other hotels around the world, but I just wanted to point that out.

One thing that our payment didn’t entitle us to having, though, is free breakfast. Although, that wasn’t really a problem since there’s a small cafeteria on the ground floor of the hotel.

In summary, I think that the price we paid for was reasonable for what came with the hotel. It also provided us a restful stay after each day of bustling around the city. So there was really nothing to complain about.

The size of the room may turn a few people off and the bathroom may get even claustrophobic, only because there’s so much fixtures inside (as opposed to the toilet in our last hotel). But when you get used to the size and eventually know how to avoid thumping your toes your way around the room, it will turn out to be just the right room for a 3 night stay in Tokyo.