Japan 2026 - Day 2 / Tokyo

Steps today: 22 410 / 14.78km

Because of the jet lag (+13 hours from home) we were awake very early, yet the fact that the sun rises at 5AM made it a little easier on us. Breakfast only opened at 7AM, so we decided to go for a walk in our neighbourhood around 6AM.

Kabukicho is Party Central and the only place we saw that was full of litter. By night it's fun and frenetic - but by day it's like cleaning up after a huge rave with litter and beer cans and dead umbrellas and garbage everywhere. We saw garbage trucks doing huge clean-ups every morning. The rest of Japan was spotless, but of course this was our first daytime glimpse and it didn't leave the best impression. It's also the redlight district and while we always felt perfectly safe, it was very clear that this part of town was for adults only! The entertainment on offer defiantly straddled legal boundaries... suffice it to say that "The Younger The Better" is the theme and it's all very androgenous.

I also noticed a large portion of the young women were into Lolita Fashion which really grated on my nerves. To each his own, who am I to judge, but it's NOT for me.  This was mainly in Tokyo, the rest of the cities we visited were full or normally clad adults.

One of the things I learned in my hours of pre vacation research is that one must go to Don Quijote (aka Donki) and try out the wide variety of unusual flavours of Kit Kats. Donki is a huge discount chain which I can only compare to our Dollorama. To me it seemed like a huge Hello Kitty junk store....  but, I can't deny that it was interesting!...  and the KitKat flavours certainly were original!  I bought Peach this time and a few days later went back for Banana.

We also took the opportunity to scope out a few restaurants for future meals but nothing appealed to us. I think part of the problem was our neighbourhood. A lot of them seemed so hole-in the-wall dingy that we were just turned off from the start. The 'nicer' looking places didn't have menus like we know them outside, but rather posters that looked like grocery store flyers. Very easy to read thanks to Google lens, but half the time I was not really sure if it was a resto or not! Frank was turned all the way off - none of it was even mildly tempting to him.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Shibuya Crossing. It was interesting, but more so because of it's total normal nothingness.  Nothing to see here by day! I would say don't bother and just like our neighbourhood of Kabukicho, come at night - that's worth the detour.  I read that good views of the crossing were available at Starbucks, so that's what we did.

Next I was going to suggest just wandering around in Shibuya but I changed my mind when I considered the weather. This is something we could do with equal satisfaction on a bad weather day, but since it was so nice out, I suggested visiting the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

Turns out we could not visit the actual palace, but we had a very nice walk through the gardens

It was a little before noon by then, and normally this would be time for a drink before lunch...  but where?! As we were walking along we spotted the Tokyo Palace Hotel and I said to Frank that I bet there would be a full bar in there! He was game and sure enough we were led into a beautiful lounge where we didn't only have a drink, but stayed for a snack-lunch and a second round of drinks too. It was lovely - and bonus: somewhere to find American wine that has been banned back home for over a year now.

Next was a visit to Aoyama Cemetery, the final resting place of many notable people including the last Shogun of Japan - but since we know nothing about Japanese History, we were in it to see the grave of Hachiko the famous dog who was so devoted to his master that he went to Shibuya Station every day for almost 10 years to wait for him after  he died suddenly in the 1920s. He was buried with his master.

The rest of the cemetery was an interesting visit too.

By about 2:30 we were exhausted and couldn't keep going so we decided to go back to the room for a rest. The plan was to let Frank have a power nap and then try again to find a place to eat supper.  I tried to wake him up around 5, but he was a zombie. Impossible. I therefore took advantage of the opportunity to try some "musts" from 7-11 that I learned about in my research: Egg Salad Sandwich and Onigiri...  probably not meant to be eaten together, but whatever, I did.

I don't know what all the fuss was about. They were good, yes, but as-expected.

All in all, it was a satisfying day.