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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Tsao_Aubbes on 2024-12-21 14:50:40+00:00.

With the end of the year coming up I found myself with floating holidays that needed to be used. At the same time my sister had just graduated college and I was thinking about doing something to celebrate. Since I’m an airline employee and we get flight benefits I started looking at taking a trip; Tokyo had good odds so we went for it.

Ultimately we only had about 3 or 4 days to ‘plan’ so we didn’t exactly have an itinerary. We just started off with a list of things we wanted to do and we took things day by day which ended up working out pretty well. Here’s what we did:

Day 0 (the flight over)

  • Get lucky and get Delta One seats on an A330neo, book hotel on inflight wifi without doing a ton of research. We ended up picking a hotel in Ikebukuro because it was cheap - the location was nearly perfect and we got super lucky with it.

Day 1

  • We arrive at Haneda. Flight lands at 2pm, purchase an eSim and Suica, we’re out and at the hotel by 5pm.
  • Weather was beautiful, both for the day and the whole trip. It averaged 50f (50c) and sunny – quite the adjustment from -5f (-15c) and snowing when we left Minnesota.
  • Spend the evening exploring Ikebukuro, get food from a random place - delicious.
  • My sister tries her first Strong Zero and I come down with a cold overnight.

Day 2

  • Satisfied my symptoms are just a cold and not COVID or strep, have my sister grab me some cold meds. I mask up and move on.
  • Sample vending machine coffee and take the train to Ueno park - see the park itself, associated museums and watch some youth leauge(?) baseball randomly.
  • Hop back on the train, headed to Asakusa to see Senshoji temple and a taiko store that sis wanted to see since she plays in college.
  • Afterwords, see some of Shinjuku, visit Map Camera, dinner (+ highballs), bed.

Day 3

  • Take the train to Yokosuka and visit the Mikasa museum. We got to chat with one of the volunteers for awhile, apparently served in the USN on loan from the JMSDF and he spoke good English. It was very cool.
  • Explore the park around Mikasa (very pretty), what we can of the USN base and Yokosuka.
  • Accidentally take the local train back from Yokosuka to Yokohama, get rewarded with an empty train, front car seats and really pretty views. Accidental highlight of the trip, it was so nice.
  • From there connect to Machida to see the Snoopy museum. You definitely get more out of it as a non American but it was still cute and our mom raised us on Peanuts, Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes so it was worth it either way.
  • The museum is connected to a park and a mall so we explored both, got some Christmas shopping in, ate dinner and called it a night.

Day 4 - the “day trip”

Day 5

  • We decided to split up. My sister had some shopping to do and visited a costume museum - I went and did the JR East railway museum in Omiya
  • Words cannot describe how much stuff the museum has, it’s awesome. The pics don’t do it justice. I particularly appreciated their working model traction unit and associated mechanical computer. The model railroad was an unexpected treat and it put the Chicago Museum of Science and Industries’ railroad to shame (which is saying something). Spent some time chatting with one of the volunteers about working as a mechanic and things like that (he was a JR mechanic, I’m an aircraft mechanic) which was super super cool.
  • After the rail museum we meet up in Shibuya, walk around and see the sights there and in Harijuku. After take the train back to Ikebukuro, grab dinner, beers in the park, bed.

Day 6 - day trip II

  • We split up again, this time I go to the Honda Collection Hall in Motegi. I take a train out of Tokyo, rent a car, I ended up with a Yaris, and drive up. The drive itself was pretty even if it was hard to admire the scenery since it was my first time driving on the left, lol.
  • The collection hall itself is wonderful it’s not quite as big as Toyota but there’s just so much to see. And as a long time Honda fan, current Honda driver/rider and former Honda employee it was something of a pilgrimage for me.
  • After the museum, check out Motegi Raceway. Walk around the stadium and paddock, watch a track day and some open wheel racing.
  • Drive the car back to Mito, try out Japanese McDonalds then take the train back to Ikebukuro.
  • Have a beer in the park, decide to grab dinner, accidentally strike up a convo with a group of random Japanese dudes. We gave some beers, talk, have a good time then I head back to the hotel.

Day 7

  • Final day. I was a bit hung over so I got a late start (~9am). I had been planning to forward bags to the airport but we missed the cutoff so I took the train to Haneda and checked my bag.
  • I took the train to Carmakecorn’s, a small Miata garage out in Edogawa so I could grab some parts for my Miata. After I visited PIT Autobachs and a motorcycle store next door and got some gloves as well as parts for my CX500.
  • Take the train back to the airport, clear security (and accidentally forget to remove the 35mm film I bought from my carry-on…), get lucky and get Delta One a second time.

All in all, for basically winging the trip it turned out really really well and it was a great lesson for further international travel since this was A) my first time traveling with organizing the trip myself and B) traveling to a non-English country. I think probably the biggest strength of our trip was our flexibility and spending most of our time out of the very touristy areas, I found I enjoyed that a lot more, at least based off our short walk-around of Shibuya and Harujuku.

That said I do sort of wish we did more touristy stuff - or at least spent more time in the really popular places of Tokyo. I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much but I could at least say I did it. I also wish I was able to go out to more at bars night but being catching that cold quashed that. Next time for sure.

Either or it’s just wistful thinking. The trip was still amazing and I really want to visit Japan again, though for next time I definitely want to get out of Tokyo. A smaller city could be fun but I was kicking around the idea of renting a motorcycle and touring the countryside. Riding the coast just sounds amazingly fun - though I’d want to learn enough Japanese to have a passable conversation before attempting something like that.

As a bonus, here’s everything I got