I am trying to kill some time until our flight to New York City next week (boy, I can’t wait to be on the road again, I am down for a break), so I am reminiscing in memories over old trips we took and I stumbled over my Tokyo pictures. We traveled to Tokyo for a long weekend during our vacation in South Korea (I sure will share some experiences from South Korea soon) to visit my little sister, who lived in Seoul for almost two years. A long weekend sure is not enough time to see everything, but we managed to get quite a good impression of the City and I can’t wait to fly back there to explore the rest of the country – it’s on the bucket list.

Island Life

We stayed at the Grand Pacific Le Daiba which is a really great hotel in the Koto-Ku area. To get to the hotel, you have to take the subway by Rinkai line, opposite from the great rainbow bridge in Tokyo. This part of Tokyo is very entertaining, right next to the big convention center, the cinema and the big shopping mall Diver City Tokyo (with a huge robot in front of it) right next to a small version of the Statue of Liberty.

We arrived later at night, so all we did was stroll around Minato-Ku, enjoyed the street art and entertainers and had a nice meal in one of the many restaurants that you can find around there, no matter if you want to go into Diver City or around the area. And even though it wasn’t as traditional as we hoped for, it was still pretty nice, but there are loads of very authentic places. One big plus about the Minato-Ku area is that the ‘island’ is only 15 minutes away from the city center, so staying there is very comfy. You can just hop on the tram and ride over within a couple of minutes, plus you have an amazing view over the river (I love living close to water).

Exploring the City

The next two days started early and all we did was exploring the city. We went to the Tsukiji fish market, where we tried original sushi (yum yum), made a boat trip along the river and had a tea session in the Yoyogi Park in the middle of Tokyo (crazy how tradition plays together with modern architecture). We also visited temples, Meiji and Asakusa, the passed the Kabukiza theater and discovered the area Harajuku, which is the fashion and shopping street, which is kind of hipster if you are asking me. It was really fun to walk around, look at the fashion and crazy accessories and all different kind of candy and food. Of course, we also walked by the most famous cross road Shibuya, unfortunately no acceptable pictures were made, but at least we can say we walked and survived (haha).

As I said before, 4 days are not enough time to explore every single corner or get all the secret insights that the city has to offer, but we got a good taste of it and I sure will go back there in the future. The culture is amazing, the people have all been very friendly and Tokyo is such an exciting city – I can only imagine how much beauty the rest of the country has to show. I can’t wait. Arigatou gozaimasu, Tokyo.