Higashihongan Ji

Arrived in Tokyo around 7am in the morning after 4 hours in a very uncomfortable Jetstar flight … that’s budget airlines for ya! (I wasn’t a fan of the headrest and Matt wasn’t a fan of no back seat pockets 😂) . We were both super happy to get off that plane and to feel cool air hitting our faces on the way out rather than humidity and an instant clamminess to our skin.

After some airport-to-train navigation we had our loaded Suica cards ready to go for the hour long ride from Narita airport into Tokyo city. We stopped at a station close by to our accommodation @KINhotel and walked about 2km. On route we stopped to caffeinate. The vending machine hot and cold beverage options were one of the highlights of Japan!

A lot of walking was done that day! We had 100yen sushi for lunch. After walking to two @Sushiro which were closed we found another sushi train and it was quite the experience. Ordering our sushi on a tablet and watching it arrive by conveyer makes for a fun lunch.

We explored some areas of Japan that would be classed as “R18” or “Adults only” in our countries … if they even existed! As one of the must-see cultural regions of the city we entertained this and braved a 4-5 Floor mall which sold a broad and bizarre range of sex toys. The building was FIVE FLOORS!!!! Unreal. We felt like naughty teens in the store just finding everything immaturely amusing and also in disbelief that such a seemingly conservative country like Japan has an entire area of its this giant city dedicated to these fetishes. For insight, they had whole floors for life-size dolls, men’s toys, women’s toys, cosplay outfits, BDSM stuff as well as random vending machines that dispensed pieces of women’s clothing that made Matt’s face lose all colour and look like he was going to be sick 🤣.

On a tamer note, we finished the day with a trip up to the Tokyo Skytree which was worth every dollar. The Skytree stands at (……….*MATT PLEASE INSERT FACTS HERE….)

The Skytree were also celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Disney by having Disney character murals, fun facts and music filling the whole observatory. There’s something so memorable about watching the sun lighting up the sky red hot and setting in the distance while you have Mount Fuji in your line of vision and the Lion King’s Circle of Life is playing in the background. Perfection.
It was really the unreal end to our first day in Tokyo and a way to stave off our sleep deprivation until nightfall.

We had our first ramen of the trip for dinner afterwards. Again, they have machines outside to take your order, for payment and to give you a ticket. We had no clue what was written so it was a guessing game what we would be served. We ended up with 1 hot ramen and a cold ramen. We both agreed we prefer our hot ramen but the cold ramen was still so so delicious!Read more