Japan - Day 4 - Tokyo

     
Stayed Shinjuku Warm House  
Ate Lunch Yakitori at Yakitori Ton Ton
  Dinner Tonkatsu and curry at Matsunoya Higashi-Shinjuku
Travel Train 22 km
  Walking 17.4 km

On our first day, we were jet-lagged. But we had some breakfast and headed to the Imperial Palace’s Chidorigafuchi Moat to see the end of the cherry blossoms. There were far gone; in fact, a team took down all the lights. However, enough was left to get a real feel for it all. We will have to keep trying; hopefully, it will be better further north.

Muji had a fun mini-world exhibition using their products with mini-people.

After walking around the moat, we stayed on the east side of the palace and headed to Ginza to check out Muji’s flagship store. It is always fun to poke around all the floors, and Owen found a few pieces of clothing.

It was a bit early, but we decided to have yakitori for lunch at a place I had read about, in a railway arch. Cheap and good. To follow that up, we went to a fancy tea at Ippudo, where Owen was keen to buy a few bags of Sencha. It was a bit of a wait, but the tea and the place were relaxing.

We had heard about TeamLabs back in London and booked tickets to give structure to our first day. The TeamLab Planets exhibition is a bit far from everything, but very worth going to. It is a big, sensory experience with about ten rooms to wander through. Beautifully done and handles large crowds well. We highly recommend it.

Afterwards, we returned to Shinjuku for drinks and dinner at a tonkatsu restaurant near our hotel.