Happy New Year!
January 1 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C
Happy New Year! 🥳
We enjoyed a nice and relaxing start to 2026. Sleeping in, buffet breakfast, followed by some shopping at nearby convenience stores (7-Eleven and Lawson). Joel went to the gym instead.
It was fun stocking up on cheap snacks and even stationery; some convenience stores are only a few hundred meters away from each other but carry different items. It is noticeably more quiet and clean in Nishi-Shinjuku compared to Shinjuku.
We had purchased 2pm tickets for TeamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills this afternoon. Borderless is a popular, immersive museum known for its futuristic digital artwork without boundaries. The next 90 minutes was a lot of fun, watching the artwork move out of rooms, relate to other works and intermingle without boundaries.
We caught up with our friends Jen and Dave tonight. The girls wanted to do some shopping (surprise, surprise!), while the guys respectfully declined 🤣. Joel invited them to the lounge for drinks and snacks so they enjoyed time there from 6-8pm before checking out the Shinjuku Neon walk. Meanwhile, the girls and I headed to Shinjuku and surprised to find Uniqlo open. We assumed all major shops and department stores would be closed today but clearly not.
And of course it was packed! While we browsed here, it was decided we would head to the nearby Don Quixote later, but not without some food first as we will need some fuel to tackle that place. We ventured into the nearby Shinjuku Beer Hall for some pasta and pizza from Ginza Lion.
Shopping at Don Quijote was fun - the girls enjoyed looking at all the snacks and toys. The queue for tourists looking to claim tax back was ridiculously long (at least 50 in line), so I gave it a miss and just joined the normal queue instead. It wasn’t worth the wait.
It’s only a 15 minute walk back to our hotel, so we decided to do this rather than wait around for the train. We unexpectedly come across the ‘“Nishi-Shinjuku Godzilla night sky”, a projection mapping show on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. We watch Godzilla attack long the building while waiting at the lights- very amusing and Japanese! 😅
We meet up with the guys at St George’s bar, where they are already onto the second round of cocktails and enjoying some live jazz.
Jen and I joined our husbands with another couple of Expresso martini’s, while the kids got mocktails. We ordered some okonomiyaki fries to share- they were delicious and a great combo. I am inspired to try make this at home!Read more