We were more than halfway through an immensely hard 2024 before we even started planning this leg of our travels. In light of how challenging the year was, we decided a more dramatic trip was in order and so we decided to return to Asia for the first time since 2019. Our one and only prior Asia trip included Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia. This time we decided to keep it simple by returning to Japan, which we frequently say is our favorite country we’ve visited, and pairing it with Vietnam to bring the average cost down.
We were able to get a good deal on a roundtrip flight to Tokyo, so we decided to start and end our trip in Japan. That meant arriving in cold winter for the first part of our trip, which would allow us to undertake an activity Chad has long dreamed of – seeing Japanese snow monkeys bath in hot springs in the wild. I’ll cover that part of the trip, which takes place in Nagano, in my next post. This one will include our two stays in Tokyo to bookend that trip. Overall, we spent a full week in Japan with two nights in Tokyo, two nights in Nagano, and three nights in Tokyo.
Tokyo Take 1
We picked the Ginza neighborhood for our initial stay in Tokyo, which is where we stayed during our prior visit in 2019. There are a lot of advantages to that neighborhood because of its centrality and abundance of great restaurants. We arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon following a 13-hour flight. Luckily we’d both been able to get a little sleep on the plane. We took the Narita Limited Express train straight to Shimbashi station, which was the nearest stop to our hotel, the Grand Hotel Ginza (review below), and had an easy six-minute walk to the hotel.
The hotel was not actually particularly grand. It is an aging property but clean and comfortable and our room seemed a little larger than what I remembered from our prior stay (which you can read about here). By the time we settled in, we just had time to reacquaint ourselves with the Ginza neighborhood, revisit a favorite bar from last time called 300 Bar (where most drinks and snacks are 300 yen, about $2 at the current exchange rate, which was $3 when we were here in 2019), and go out for some tasty shoyu ramen where they sold mini-sized beers that were just right for what we wanted and provided a handy apron to protect my sweater from splatter stains from the noodle soup.
For our full day in Tokyo, we went out to the neighborhood of Meguro to visit a minipig cafe called Mipig. One of our Christmas gifts to each other was visiting as many ethical animal cafes as we want in Japan. Based on my research, it seems like the ones with dogs, cats, and pigs are all pretty humane, with the animals enjoying the time with humans (this was definitely the case at Mipig). The hedgehog and owl cafes seem questionable, so we won’t go to any of those.
At Mipig, you choose between a 25 minute, 55 minute or 85 minute visit. The shortest time seemed good to me. The cost of 1870 yen (about $12) includes a beverage, so Chad ordered a cappuccino and I got an orange juice. After placing the order and signing a waiver (apparently the pigs can bite), we were taken to a room with at least a dozen small pigs and offered seats on cushions at a small table. There was one other couple present and they both had laps full of pigs. When we sat down we were given blankets to spread over our legs and immediately several pigs came over to us to claim space on our laps. Mostly my lap at first but soon some of the cutest, smallest pigs found Chad. It wasn’t my favorite activity (the pigs on me were kind of heavy, their hair is pretty bristly so not that pleasant to pet them, and I was very conscious of not wanting to be bitten) but I can see the appeal and the pigs really seemed to love the staff and being near people. Overall it was a worthwhile experience, though I think I’ll like the dog cafes better.
After the pig cafe, we walked back to Meguro station to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant for lunch. Then we went to the Tokyo Photography Museum, which was just so-so, though that might have been because it was all a special free exhibit that didn’t include a lot of actual photography (more digital art and video). There was one multi-media installation that we really enjoyed. That evening, we bought the most vegetable-heavy foods we could find at the Lawson Natural convenience store (spring rolls, salads, etc.) for a lighter late dinner in our room ahead of a long Zoom call I needed to do that night. The next day, we worked in our room all morning and then took a Shinkansen bullet train to Nagano.
Tokyo Take 2
We returned to Tokyo from Nagano quite late in the day and took a taxi from Ueno Station to our new hotel near Nippori Station so we wouldn’t have to deal with luggage on a potentially crowded metro line. We got checked into our even smaller room in the budget-friendly APA Hotel Nippori-ekimae (review below). There are hotels of this chain all over the city and we’ll be staying in one again when we return to Tokyo in April. Luckily other than the tiny size, the room was very comfortable. For dinner, we walked through Yanaka Cemetery to the Nezu neighborhood to a little hole-in-the-wall udon place that had great reviews. We had a short wait for a table but it was worth the walk and the wait. But we neglected to get pictures here.
After so many days of travel and sightseeing, we really needed to get some solid work done so developed a routine for our two full days in Tokyo, working all morning (sustained by breakfast snacks from the Family Mart convenience store down the block) and then out for a long walk and lunch midday, then rest or more work. For our first day, a Sunday, we took the train two stops to Ueno Park and joined the throngs of people enjoying an unseasonably warm 61-degree February day. We found a bench with a view of the paddle boats and enjoyed a tasty convenience store picnic.
The second day we walked around the Yanaka neighborhood and were hoping to find a charming place for lunch but what we saw looked too heavy or had too much of a wait. We came back to our street and decided to try a chain cheap soba restaurant where you order and pay from a machine (we’d done this several times with ramen on our prior Tokyo trip). It was very tasty and about as great an under $5 per person meal in Tokyo as you could hope for.
On the middle evening of our stay, we went out to Akihabara Electric Town, which was one of our first stops on our prior stay, to enjoy seeing all the lights and electronics stores and gaming venues. From there we walked up to Ueno Station to try an all-unagi (eel) restaurant called Unatoto Unagi. The restaurant turned out to be among dozens of little bars and restaurants located under the tracks by Ueno Station. The entire area was full of young people enjoying Saturday night out and delightful to walk around. Our eel meal was interesting. We got a snack sampler that was hit-and-miss – the eel-bone crackers were kind of gross, the eel stew wrapped in omelet was delicious, the eel on a stick also delicious but not its accompanying tail (we think) on a stick (very bony). We also split a double order of their eel and rice bowl, which was fantastic with very tender eel and very sticky rice. It was a fun experience.
Summary and Final Memories
Tokyo completely lived up to our great memories and high expectations the second time around. In some ways it was better because 6 years ago we found it kind of pricey, but the weakened yen makes it really quite affordable (in 2019, we had about a 110 yen to $1 exchange rate; now it is about 150 yen per $1). When we return in a couple of months, winter will be gone and we expect to fall in love with Japan all over again.
Hotel Reviews
Ginza Grand Hotel: Great location and value but terrible wifi – This hotel is in a great location in Ginza, very convenient to Shimbashi station, making it easy to get around Tokyo. The staff were very kind and professional. The room was a typical Tokyo size (small) and though aging, generally comfortable. The wifi was really awful and inconsistent. I was not able to stay on my video call or stream entertainment without lots of issues.
APA Hotel TKP Nippori-Ekimae: Great experience – This hotel definitely met our needs for a 3-night stay in Tokyo. Very convenient to Nippori station, which is a stop on the Skyline Express train from Narita, and several other lines that make it easy to get around Tokyo. Room was small but clean and the staff were friendly and professional. Wifi was better than some we’ve had in Tokyo but was inconsistent for a video call. I especially liked that the hotel is fully nonsmoking. Great stay!