NYE in Tokyo

Our first NYE overseas and what a wonderful way to end 2025! Not only have we been blessed to travel with good friends but things have also run smoothly; with no flight cancellations and only minimal delays on the road considering all the snow seen in Sapporo.

Jazzy enjoyed a sleep in after another big day yesterday, while Joel and I headed downstairs for a ‘light’ breakfast. Considering our big lunch plans today, we only had some fruit, a detox juice and small coffee.

Our friends from Canberra (Jen & Dave) had just arrived in Tokyo yesterday. We made plans some months ago to all head out for a lunch at the Sky Grill Buffet Musashi at the Asakusa View Hotel. Surprisingly, a lot of restaurants here are closed from around 30th December and it was also tricky to find somewhere large enough to fit 10 of us.
We met them at Shinjuku train station and made our way there for our 11.30am lunch. We arrived 10 minutes early and there was already long queue. Once seated, we were reminded of our 90 minute sitting as the next sitting was at 1.30pm. We made good use of our 90 minutes there, in fact they had to kick us out when we were running 10 minutes late 😂
There was a good variety of Asian and Western dishes (my favourite was a fresh tempura), and we had a lovely view of Tokyo sky tree.

We went our seperate ways after lunch. A short visit to the nearby Kappabashi kitchen town kitchen street as most stores were closed.

Next stop is to Moffu Harajyuku cafe where we had booked in 1 hour play time with Samoyeds. Pet cafes are very popular in Japan and this was on Jazzy’s to do list, so here we are on NYE! The dogs are incredibly cute with their soft fur and charming smiles. Every visitor is allowed a dog- we spend the next hour feeding and playing with them.
We did a little shopping around Omotesando afterwards before heading back to the hotel for our usual drinks and snacks at the lounge.

Meanwhile, Ange and Adrian were hitting up the Shinjuku shops until the last minute, since they fly back to Sydney tomorrow morning.
We caught up with them briefly around 7.30pm, hoping for one last drink at one of our hotels but both were completely booked out for NYE.

It’s still early, so we decided to venture out to Shinjuku to see what was open. It’s NYE in Tokyo - surely there is something we can do. The main area of Shinjuku is buzzing as usual but a lot of shops have closed early. Most places close over the new year period, often for several days and resume business on 3rd or 4th January.

Of course Don Quijote is still open 24 hours so.. we head in there for a Quick Look (probably still too long if you ask Joel 😂).
They sell pretty much everything here but it was quite busy so we a brief visit on each floor. I couldn’t put him through another madhouse after our visit to Cosme yesterday.

On the walk back to our hotel, we come across the Shinjuku Neon Walk ( a light festival with digital art and food trucks in the Nishi Shinjuku area). There were people around but not overly busy which was a nice surprise.
We have had some full and tiring days since arriving in Japan, so this was a really nice way to end 2025 🎉🥳 We can hear crowds cheering nearby and some small fireworks go off as midnight approachesRead more