konnichiwa – i’m back!!!

Konnichiwa! I’m bringing back this old blog of mine to document my (our) travels to Japan – my third time back in this country. As soon as we landed in Tokyo, I was reminded why this city has been my favorite place, and I think I have successfully sold Alex and Tyler on this notion as well. I’m so excited to be sharing this country with them both!

Before I get started on our first few days of adventures, please just keep in mind that I’m writing this at almost midnight after about 22,000 steps of walking on our first day. This is going to be a very exhausting and exciting trip, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

We landed into Narita around 3pm on Thursday (yesterday) and after going through customs, making our way into the city, and checking into our hotel, my first priority was to head to Shibuya to show Alex and Tyler my old ‘stomping grounds’. This was the neighborhood that I fell in love with first and I could not wait to show them where I lived for a while in 2014 (I can’t believe how long ago that was). Most importantly, though, there is this Indian restaurant… If you have ever had Indian food with me, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Ever since I have eaten at this Indian restaurant with my model roommates I have compared every single piece of naan I have eaten afterwards to the cheese naan I have had here. I know it just holds a lot of sentimental memories, but this place is SO good. And the verdict is in, Alex and Tyler both agreed that it was pretty darn good. The $7 meal price isn’t so bad either.

After our dinner, we walked around Shibuya a little more and then we all felt exhausted and jet-lagged and headed back to our cute little hotel for the night.

Our first full day was so much fun already! We started off the day in Shibuya again at the Starbucks Reserve and Roastery. There are only six of these in the world and they are giant versions of Starbucks where they roast the beans. This one had four floors with specialty coffees, teas, and pastries. I had the most delicious tea latte and an almond croissant, Alex had a barrel aged latte (he says the best coffee he has ever had) with a cream pastry, and Tyler also had a cream pastry. It was a really cool place to check out.

After Starbucks, we made our way back into Shibuya to do some shopping and eventually end up in the Harajuku area. We had lunch at another spot I used to go to, a small gyoza shop. It was delicious!

After lunch, we did more shopping and exploring and we walked past a Japanese photo booth place. I have done many of these with friends in the past and knew I had to do one with Alex and Tyler while we were here. I honestly can’t decide if this was the best part of the day because we were laughing so much at how ridiculous it was. I wish we could read japanese so that we would have been able to follow the directions to get all our pictures emailed to us, but we still have these amazing pictures as souvenirs.

And finally, as the highlight of our first day we made our way to the Tokyo Auto Salon. This is Japan’s largest car show and it was on Tyler’s list of must do’s. It definitely did not disappoint, we all had so much fun! And, as a bonus, there was an outdoor show going on at the same time that we were able to check out. We went through the first large room for over an hour and thought we had seen it all, and then we realized there were 8 more rooms just like it. It was huge and had a large variety of sports cars to outdoor cars. Tyler is probably the best person to ask more about this on because I was constantly asking what make of car we were looking at. We also didn’t realize we would be adding to our collection of reusable bags on this trip with all the freebies we got. Tyler wanted to find something as a souvenir from the car show and after looking at some sweatshirts he thought were too expensive, he found a cool toy car he thought would be a better choice. He apparently didn’t look at the price tag because after checking out and asking ‘Alexa’ how much 20,000 yen is he realized he just spent about $150 USD after saying that the $50 sweatshirt was too much. We all decided the car is still really worth it and will be a cool collectible to keep!

Finally, we ended the day getting some curry and katsu and checking out a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. I knew that coming to Japan I wanted to find ways to remember dad and I’ve been looking forward to having some eel (unagi) sushi together to honor him. Tyler wasn’t sure if he was in the mood for fish and I told him that this is exactly what dad would be doing, asking us to “just try it, it’s really good!” So, we cheered with some unagi sushi and discussed how he probably would’ve wanted us to put some wasabi on that. I so wish we could be sharing all these stories with him, Tyler and I especially talked about how much he would have loved the car show, but I am reminding myself that he has been with us and sharing these experiences with us this whole time. I’m sure I’ll have more sushi in the day’s to come for you, dad!