TAPAN TSuitcase Story Japan: our trip to Tokyo and Mt. Fuji (35 best pictures!)
World trip becomes Japan Trip: after many months of planning and taking care of details, it was finally happening; we were going on a world trip. On our trip, we planned to be in Japan in late March, early April. And then corona happened!
Just because our complete world trip got all weird (we have only seen two of the eight countries), and the fact that we were gone the whole month of March, we still had a blast considering the circumstances. The month of March was definitely the weirdest month of our lives. Traveling through a utopia like Tokyo, Japan while the whole world is in shock was a very unique and very weird experience. Many hours were spend staring at our phones in disbelief. A world trip became a Japan trip (painful at first, but Japan was awesome!).
Oh well, we probably all got our own f**ked up corona-story. We don’t feel ay self-pity because we thought many millions, maybe even billions, of people are worse off. This virus and the consequences of the lockdown are gonna tear us a number. We hope you are all safe and healthy while reading this!
Let’s get back to the suitcase story. We’ve had a great time in Japan (until the Olympics were canceled) and we have visited many cool hotspots we want to show you. And above all, we want to share the best pictures we’ve shot. Japan is truly a breathtaking country filled with many many Insta-worthy shots.
Let’s have a closer look at our wonderful Japan trip and all these great pictures!
Two weeks in Tokyo
We intended to visit Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, but as you know that didn’t go according to plan. Because we didn’t know what the lockdown would mean for many countries and it’s travelers, we hovered around Tokyo just to be safe. We’ve had two amazing weeks in this unmatched mega-city that was still pretty ‘open’. Restaurants, stores, supermarkets, and parks were still open. The sky decks and museums were unfortunately closed (like Tokyo Skytree, Robot Restaurant, Teamlab Borderless, and MET Building). We need to come back soon to experience these amazing places!
We planned one week in Tokyo at first, but after being there for two weeks, we truly saw how much time you need to visit the best hotspots in Tokyo. And just to blow your mind a bit, you’ll probably need a couple of months to visit every district and hotspot. It’s a megacity with more than 13 million inhabitants. And that’s just the center of Tokyo, the whole area has about 40 million inhabitants!
The warm toilet seat
You will find this funny, but you’ll understand as soon you sit on it. Japan is like a warm toilet seat. Let me explain; in the west, we are used to sitting on cold porcelain toilet seats, including dirty toilet-brushes. You’ll find an immaculate high-tech toilet in Japan everywhere you look! These toilets have warm seats, a little stream of water for your ass, your front, and a blowdryer to get you cleaned up and ready. There are no toilet-brushes! This is because the toilet has it’s own cleaning function. It’s brilliant! You never touch any dirty things!
The well thought through and very logical toilet is a perfect example of how progressive the Japanese are in terms of comfort and technology.
They also never shake hands and hardly touch each other, their hygiene is just next level! They bow to each other out of respect and that is such a logical and very polite thing to do. Every street, park, and all the stores are also very clean and tidied up. This made me realize that we in the west are kinda like pigs in a sty. This is a very dramatic statement, but you’ll understand as soon you sit on a warm toilet seat.
Also check out: An awesome week roadtrippin’ through beautiful Iceland
The many pros
This segment might feel as if we’re reviewing a videogame, but it seemed logical to do because we want to show you why Japan (and especially Tokyo) is so awesome!
+ The culture of decency
It’s so admirable how unbelievable decent the Japanese are. They behave like perfect immaculate citizens and I mean that in the most positive way. They are very polite, very kind, very thoughtful, and just really cute. They almost all are like a 7-year-old kid who is proudly going to show you his toy collection. It’s amazing how kind and sweet these people truly are. Western people could pick up a thing or two from the Japanese about a little bit more decency and kindness.
That being said, the Japanese could learn a thing or two from Europeans and Americans about being a little bit more outgoing. Have a little fun, laugh, be silly, don’t be shy, be yourself. Our cultures should come together to become the ultimate culture! 🙂
Another great example of their perfect behavior is how amazingly well dressed the women are. Their hair, nails, shoes, jackets, and handbags are just picture perfect. They look like they are going to Milan Fashion Week! And we have to give a shoutout to all the Japanese people who work in supermarkets and stores, they truly give us the feeling that we are welcome. That we are humans deserving a human experience. That is such an upside of visiting Japan; you’ll feel like your a welcomed guest!
This cute little kid in the park is just the perfect illustration of how kawaii ( cute) the Japanese people are.
+ The great food
As expected, the food is just so good! We have had the best sushi, the best bapao, the best ramen noodles, the best egg sandwich, and the best steak. You’ll understand how something is supposed to taste when you’ve had the best ones (this rule also applies to for example ice and pizza in Italy). Also, the typical Japanese dishes were very tasteful and we would love to try them many times over. We enjoyed dishes like okonomiyaki, takoyaki, melon pans, and dozens of dishes we don’t even know what it was. Our advice; buy everything you can, stuff your face, and discover what you like. Most packages and restaurant menus are hard to decipher, so you’ll have to become a little bit more adventurous!
We’ve spent a whole bunch of money in these lovely konbini’s (the 24/7 little supermarkets) to just about try every snack, sandwich, chips, nuts, sushi, and dish. Loved it!
+ Cheaper than most western countries
One of the greatest upsides of traveling is that your assumptions get destroyed. We thought, just like everyone around us, that Japan would be very expensive. This was complete nonsense! It’s even way cheaper than traveling in countries like The Netherlands, England, France, and the USA. The groceries, restaurant bills, and transportation were very affordable. So we just bought everything we wanted to eat, drink and have. The bills were mostly about 20–30% lower than in Europa’s restaurants. For example; a bottle of water out of a vending machine costs 0,75 dollars. In Europa, you would pay about 2.25 dollars for the same type of bottled water.
Also, the hotels are decently affordable, just like western prices. We stayed at the APA Hotel in Shinjuku and the one in Akihabara. The cab rides, train rides, and tickets for fun stuff were quite affordable. Not cheap, but not expensive!
This silly assumption has left the building!
+ Logical ánd tasty
Japan is just so well thought trough. They have thought about everything and it all feels so comfortable and logical. People with OCD will love Japan. We’ll give you three examples of things we still miss to this day;
The konbini’s: these little supermarkets are open 24/7. They never close. They have a wide variety of choices, are very affordable and almost everything tastes excellent. It’s all better than you would expect from a supermarket. And, there are literally thousands of them spread across the city!
The onsen: A whole bunch of hotels has an onsen. This is a Japanese bathhouse where you go and scrub and clean yourself. Before entering, you’ll walk with your kimono and sandals towards the onsen (hotel rooms have these ready for you). Men and women are separate and you’re naked in the onsen. When you enter the onsen, you’ll see multiple possible ‘cubicles’ where you take a seat on a small wooden bench. In front of you are a big mirror, shampoo, and a showerhead. You then scrub, clean, and wash your self, while looking at yourself butt-naked!
After a couple of minutes of bathing, you step in the very hot baths of about 42 degrees Celcius/ 100 degrees Fahrenheit. While spacing out and getting pretty warm, you’ll feel a sense of relaxation. A cold shower afterward it the perfect ending of this session. After about 15–20 minutes, you are clean and very relaxed. Time to go to bed!
We think you now know why we miss these onsens…
The vending machines:
Oh my lord, these vending machines are awesome! We hardly get anything out of vending machines when we are in Europa or Amerika, but we bought each and every day a whole bunch of drinks (warm coffee, cold water, great tea’s) in Tokyo. They don’t have snacks in their machines, and I think that is because they don’t eat in the streets. Nowhere you will find a Japanese person eating in the streets. How decent right?
The drinks are all very tasteful and very affordable (a can of warm coffee is about 1.10 US dollars). These vending machines would be a great addition to many big cities.
Are there any downsides? Oh yes!
Yes, you are in the coolest city in the world, but the language is a really big problem. You are literally lost in translation. The Engels of the Japanese is quite bad (or I should say: our Japanese was horrible and too basic to get any conversation started). Even when you would try to say basic things, it would be very hard to get across what you both are trying to say. Trying to read these complex Japanese words is just impossible (luckily they include a whole lot of Engels in subways, stores, hotspots, and restaurant menus).
The bizarre thing we encountered was that the Japanese who were working on important spots like an information hub on a train station of an airport, couldn’t speak proper English. While there are many English-speaking tourists, their English was just sub-par. I understand that we should learn Japanese to engage with the local culture, but people working on important touristy information hubs should be able to help tourists with their questions.
It hurt our traveling souls that we couldn’t dive deeper into the minds and hearts of the Japanese culture. A good conversation could open your eyes to what the country is really like. You need to learn to form sentences and know how to pronounce it all, but that requires a whole bunch more work then just knowing 25 Japanese words like arigato, ohayo, Konnichiwa, and kawaii.
The second downside was the food. Wait, what? Yes, the food was a downside after about two weeks. The first week it was like we were in food heaven, but after about 10 days we were getting quite done with egg, rice, sushi, noodles, sandwiches, egg, egg, pigg, egg, and egg. It was just a bit too much of the same. And we tried a whole bunch of restaurants and konbini’s, but we would have loved a bit more variety in the diet.
With all these upsides and downsides combined, I would recommend traveling through Tokyo for a minimum of 10 days.
Wow, Mt Fuji
Within two hours you can travel from Tokyo to the famous magical Mount Fuji. The closer you get to the mountain, the more you understand it’s mythological status. It’s a giant with an impressive white roof. Our recommendation; take about 3 days for this whole region, enjoys the views, and don’t forget to get a traditional hotel (a ryokan) with an onsen. Your stay at this special region will be complete with a visit to these unique hotels.
We stayed at the Mifujien at Lake Kawakuchigo. This atmospheric ryokan also has a traditional breakfast included, which means you’ll get the full experience and unique menu of the traditional Japanese breakfast. And the biggest upside of staying at Mifujien was the onsen that had a view on Mount Fuji. Watching the sunset going down on Mt Fuji while being butt-naked in an onsen was a very memorable moment!
The best Instaworthy shots, if you are interested in taking these kinda pictures, are at the Chureito Pagado and the main street of the village of Fuji. You’ll be very impressed with all these views. Mt Fuji is truly an unmatched beauty.
More cool photos of Tokyo!
We love to shoot atmospheric pictures that give you a sense of how it is really like. These are our 35 best pictures of about 1500+ pictures we took.
Are we still going on our world trip?
Well, no. The corona-virus through a wrench in our ambitious plans, so this exact world trip will not happen any time soon. But with that being said, we will continue to travel as soon as the corona-crisis is settled down. As soon as just one country opens up again, we will be back free birding around the world. It might take a while, like September or December, but as soon as we can go, we are going!
The world trip might be canceled, but our spirit for traveling the world has not.
We will continue sharing our greatest suitcase stories, travel pictures, and tips (of previous trips) on Free Birds Magazine!
ps; loved these tips and shots? We got more!
We are going to post a whole bunch more articles about Japan. Search for Japan in the search bar and you will find all of them!
More pictures;
► Our 19+ favorite pictures of our trip to Shibuya and Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan
► Our 20+ favorite pictures of our trip to Akihabara and Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
► Our 20+ favorite pictures of our trip to Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
► Our 16+ favorite pictures of our trip to Mount Fuji, Japan
► Our 20+ favorite pictures of our trip to the district of Ueno in Tokyo, Japan
More Travel Inspiration: A great weekend trip to wonderful Budapest!
Pictures: Guus & Suus.
Editing pictures: Suus.
Text: Guus.
For me, there is no greater feeling than traveling the world. I want to share that enthusiasm and inspire you with great storytelling, awesome pictures and interesting articles to also travel more!
Originally published at https://www.freebirdsmagazine.com on June 30, 2020.