Korea & Japan 2024 (9/10) – City #5 – Tokyo

Another Shinkansen train ride later, we arrived at Tokyo. We pulled a pro move hopping off at Shinagawa rather than going all the way to Tokyo Station, saving a few minutes of travel time.

Conrad Tokyo

The family stayed at this awesome hotel for five nights. With Hilton’s fifth-night free, I was able to book two rooms for 760,000 points, draining a whole decade’s savings. My two prior attempts to book even one room for night at this property were incredibly difficult, so it felt like a gift from heavens when I saw an opening to snatch two rooms for five nights. This reservation served as a back-end anchor that we looked forward to the entire trip.

Though this turned out to be a mixed-bag blessing/curse situation. We probably would have scheduled just 3 days in Tokyo. Getting to sleep more nights in Conrad came with the cost of spending less time in Busan and Fukuoka. Furthermore, this mega city wasn’t quite compatible with Mah and Bah’s style of travel. Even though this hotel was adjacent to one of the city’s top transit hubs, finding food in any direction required walking a whole kilometer. The five-star luxury ended up being rather burdensome, which was a bummer.

Another disappointment was the near-absence of Diamond member recognition. Because both rooms were under my name, the hotel insisted that only one of them were available to receive benefits. What dumb policy was that? They wouldn’t budge when I noted that Hong was also a Diamond member. So that means only 2 of the 6 of us could use the lounge or get hotel breakfast. The rest, they reminded us, were welcome to enjoy those things at some crazy high cost. Yeah, no thanks. There was also no room upgrade (I was hoping for the bay view for Bah and Mah). Instead of the Diamond member 4pm checkout, we were offered 1pm checkout for just one of those rooms. Lame…

So for the rest of the trip, we joked about how the hotel probably rolled their eyes at us “points people” for crippling their revenue stream by taking up so much space. The more we looked, the more it felt like they were judging us and intentionally giving us a hard time. When Hong and I went to the gym on our last night, they insisted that she didn’t have proper footwear and was *required* to spend $7 to rent a pair of shoes and a pair of socks for one hour. Urg.

Another thing that I was upset with the hotel for was the pool. It’d be neat to swim at the Conrad Tokyo pool, right? However, when we looked on its official website, it had indicated the pool was under maintenance well into 2025. Huge bummer, but we told the kids in advance so they wouldn’t waste luggage space packing swimsuits or build up mental anticipation. And guess what? The pool was open during our stay! So we could have swam but now were not prepared to. What the heck!?

Well, that hasn’t exactly been a five-star review of the hotel, huh? Maybe I should also mention the young man who threw up in our hallway and collapsed from hangover in the elevator bank…

While I was disappointed about not getting the bay view, though, I grew to enjoy the city view as my favorite thing about this stay. Tokyo is such a mega city and being high above it all was really special. Seeing all the trains below running through Shimbashi and Shiodome around the clock was also super energizing. I suppose it was a lesson learned about being mentally flexible, and not obsess over the preconceived notion that more expensive is always better.

Nihonbashi

Nihonbashi, or “Japan Bridge”, is a district adjacent to Ginza named after an actual bridge. This river crossing and a fish market go way back to the beginning of the Edo period. It is now the official center of Tokyo and considered the starting point of roads in Japan.

So I figured we’d begin our Tokyo sightseeing right here on this bridge. To my surprise, it ended up being Bah and Mah’s favorite spot in the city.

Art Aquarium Museum

Hong and I most looked forward to Art Aquarium Museum, an artsy goldfish exhibition in Ginza. It was at the Mitsukoshi department store, where the famous lion sculpture sat. The exhibit was on the 8th floor but the entrance was on the 9th right by the downward escalator. It was rather confusing just to get in.

This “museum” I would describe as a mesmerizing display of lights and water, which kind of happened to have goldfish swimming in them. Having cared for this animal as pets, I strongly suspected that the exhibits were not great for the fish’s physical or mental health. It was pretty, though. Bah and Mah were done pretty quickly, but Hong and I took our time to enjoy this place thoroughly.

Meiji Shrine

This was a giant park and a shrine dedicated to the most accomplished emperor in the country’s history. It was relatively easy to visit thanks to the ample shade. We got to witness some Shinto ceremony, as well.

Godzilla Shinjuku

We didn’t spend much time in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s busiest districts. We did come here, however, to check out the giant (life-sized?) Godzilla head. It sat atop Hotel Gracery, a hotel that was partially Godzilla themed. Our original plan was to get Godzilla-themed dessert at its lobby cafe, where there’s a good view of this head. However, we arrived at lunch time and they didn’t serve any real food. Additionally, we had gotten our photos right from the hotel lobby so it was unnecessary to linger at the cafe. So we left to find lunch.

Shibuya

Shibuya Scramble might be the world’s most famous street intersection. At a minimum, it is one of those sights that you see in every single video about Tokyo. We dedicated some time to people watch here, and the best spot was supposedly this second-floor Starbucks. We had tried very hard to avoid spending money at Starbucks on this trip, including that famous one in Kyoto Gion, but broke our streak here. A window seat wasn’t as difficult to come by as we had read about, but that was probably because we arrived quite early in the day. The crossing had a constant stream of people, but it was far from the spectacle that it’s usually associated with.

My favorite thing had gotta be this outdoor smoking jail. Japan sure had evolved since our first visit, when smokers were everywhere.

Somewhat noteworthy is the nearby Miyashita Park, a rooftop “park” above a shopping mall. It was of a respectable size, but I find it hard to call it a park because most of the space was pay-per-use facilities and Adidas advertising. Nevertheless, I like how the Japanese often turn rooftops into usable space.

Then we went to Parco, a department store with all the fun stuff – Capcom, Nintendo, and Pokemon.

Azabudai Hills

This was a fairly recent development of a business/retail/residential mixed-use neighborhood. It featured a bunch of buildings including Japan’s current tallest (Mori JP Tower) and some made to look like a grassy hill. A few years ago I would’ve been all over this sort of thing, but now I was more skeptical of corporate-controlled urban design. It also felt like too many buildings in Japan were made to resemble natural terrain, so each subsequent project just seemed like a tired copycat.

We came here in part to visit the %Arabica cafe, found in the Mori JP Tower. Can’t say I even liked their coffee, but the aesthetic was really something.

Tokyo Tower

This tower is on that part of a Venn Diagram intersecting “top landmark in Tokyo” and “skippable tourist trap”. It’d be a shame to not check it out while staying at a hotel within walking distance, but its main observation deck may have also been the lowest of such thing that I ever paid money for.

We got kind of excited seeing the Tower’s website advertising a stairs climbing challenge. You could win a postcard or something if you manage to ascend the 60-ish flights of stairs. Weekend only. Xuan was fixated on the prize, while Hong and I felt attracted to the experience. A big reason for our visit to the tower was this challenge.

After purchasing the tickets for the whole family, we were told that the stairs were closed due to the extreme heat. What??? We were really disappointed. While our California-based family had struggled the whole trip to cope with the weather, none of us thought the temperature would have stopped us from running up those stairs. How was it possible that the locals thought it was too hot? Xuan further pointed out their hypocrisy in still operating those plastic jumpy houses at the base of the tower. Guess it wasn’t too hot for activities that they charged people extra money for.

City #6 – Yokohama

Yokohama is an entirely separate city in Tokyo Bay. Its historic significance to Japan is similar to Shanghai’s to China, e.g. first to modernize thanks to western forces strong-arming their way in. We had contemplated a more extensive stay here, at which point it would’ve deserved a whole separate post. But we ended up doing only a half-day trip to see the most tourist-centric part of the city.

From Shimbashi, a very central part of Tokyo, we were able to get to Yokohama (30km away) in 3 stops and under 25 minutes. That made this second largest city in Japan felt like an integral part of Tokyo. From there, we hopped on the local subway to Minato Mirai, a waterfront amusement area.

First we saw but skipped Cosmo World (Ferris wheel) and Red Brick Warehouse.

Then we took a long break at Zebra Cafe. It had great coffee, pastries, and view of the bay. Even more noteworthy was its ample space. It felt rather luxurious by Japan standards.

After coffee, we visited the Cup Noodles Museum, one of Yokohama’s main attractions. Its primary activity that people talk about is making your own personalized cup noodles. We didn’t buy tickets in advance so the wait would’ve been unpleasant, but nobody in the family cared for the gimmick that much anyway. The rest of the “museum” amounted to a glorified Wikipedia page on the instant noodles inventor and an Asian grocery store aisle. Nevertheless, it was impressive how such a niche historic tidbit could turn into an interactive art museum.

Lastly, we took a cable car named Air Cabin to the train station. It was amusing how short that ride was (<0.4 mi). You could easily walk to the other end faster than buying tickets and taking the cable car. Still, the view was nice and the air-conditioned cabin was a joy on a hot summer day.

We planned to visit and have lunch in Yokohama Chinatown, but ended up eating in a mall within Minato Mirai. It was a slight bummer to skip out on Japan’s largest Chinatown, but it would’ve been too much trouble to detour there without having a meal, especially because the Gundam Factory wasn’t there any more.

Korea & Japan 2024 Index