🇯🇵 Japan Trip 2026

Convenience Store Breakfast

We were up pretty early to start our mission to the Meiji Shrine, in another part of Tokyo. We decided to walk to Karinmae, about 20 minutes from our hotel, and catch the Oedo line from there to Yoyogi. The walk was down a lot of pleasant back-streets. It was pretty quiet and it was kind of nice walking away from the bustle of the festival going on in Asakusa. We got to the station and grabbed a quick breakfast from the Lawson convenience store: a couple of bottles of iced coffee, a choc swirl pastry, a melon pan bun, and a cold French toast that tasted like egg custard. We're fans of melon pan, because they remind us of a Netflix tv-series called MIU404, which is a detective drama where the police department has a special unit that is so underfunded that they can't have a police vehicle, so they drive around in a melon pan van. This piqued our interest in melon pan, which really is just a sweet bun that doesn't seem to have much to do with melons at all. 😂

Meiji Shrine

The walk from Yoyogi station to the entrance of the Meiji Shrine was interesting. A completely different part of Tokyo that definitely felt a bit more up-market and reminded us of some parts of London. Where Asakusa is mostly flat, this area had a bit more elevation. As we approached the shrine entrance, we could see some monks walking towards us. It was funny to see them all scrolling away on their mobile phones as they walked.

The Meiji Shrine is one of the largest shrines in Tokyo and is a significant landmark. We were approaching from one of the less busy entrances, but it was still pretty busy. As you walk into the grounds, there is an immense tori gate that you walk through. The shrine is surrounded by a dense forest, which creates a peaceful and serene atmosphere. It also provides some much needed shade.

This is a major shrine, and you can feel it the moment you enter. It is also really busy with people. It is difficult to photograph and capture the atmosphere because of the crowds, but also because of the layout. Also, you're not meant to photograph inside the main shrine building, which is a ceremonial space. We took a selfie in front of the main building, but someone seemed to gleefully photobomb our pic 😂

Most Shinto shrines have a place to hang ema, which are wooden plaques where you can write out prayers and wishes. They usually sell these at the shrine along with other charms and souvenirs. There are usually long queues to buy these. The shrines also often provide an option to write your prayers and wishes on paper, which they collect and burn in a ceremonial offering at the end of each day. We wrote out prayers and put them in envelopes and deposited into the offering box. We both wished for world peace.

Meiji Jingu Gardens

The Meiji Jingu Gardens are in the grounds of the Meiji Shrine. The shrine was created for the Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken, who were the first Emperor and Empress of Japan after the country opened up to the world in the late 19th century. They were both very influential in modernising Japan and bringing it into the modern world. The gardens are a separate area in the grounds of the shrine. They include a tea house used by the Empress, a large pond where she is said to have enjoyed fishing, an iris pond, and an azalea garden. Unfortunately, the azaleas were all out of bloom, maybe because of the hot, dry weather. Also, the irises hadn't yet come into bloom, but it was a pretty space to visit and we enjoyed walking around away from the crowds.

On the way out of the gardens we stopped to watch a heron in the pond and I managed to catch this series of pictures as it snapped up a fish.

As we left the temple grounds, we stopped by the gift shop and bought some cards shaped like Japanese fans with traditional motifs. Also we discovered the wine barrels that were donated to the Emperor from France as a goodwill gesture as Japan opened up to trade. Also, opposite the wine barrels were a large collection of sake barrels which are offered to the kami of the shrine every year.

Harajuku & Takeshita Street

We exited the park at Harajuku station. There were a lot of people and it was hot. Due to some poor navigation, we ended up walking a long way around to get to the bottom of the very famous Takeshita street. If we had just crossed the road on the other side of the station, we could have walked down the street directly.

The walk was good though, because it was mostly shaded, and outside of the main bustle and we got to see a few interesting outfits as we got closer to Takeshita street.

Takeshita Street itself is intense. Lots of people and basically food and clothing shops mostly geared towards younger people. Although it is a hot spot to visit, we weren't particularly taken with it, and I must admit that for youth culture, Maria and I found that our walk around Chuo Ward towards the end of our stay in Osaka was much more real.

Midway down Takeshita Street, there is a manga/anime museum and artwork shop. This is worth a visit because it is free, it is cool, it is a floor above the milieu, and most of all it is pretty cool to see original artwork from some of the most famous mangaka and anime creators in the world.

Shibuya - The Crossing!

Like suckers for punishment, we emerged from the chaos of Takeshita street and caught the train from Harajuku to Shibuya so that we could go and experience the famous Shibuya Crossing. Shibuya station in itself is crazy busy and we snuck out with an immediate plan to go and find some lunch before we actually spent any time watching the crossing itself. We took an easy crossing that kind of avoided the centre of the chaos and headed straight for a vegan restaurant in the Parco shopping mall called Masako. The food was excellent and we were impressed with the selection.

Less excellent: the 💩 'incident' at the shopping mall afterward. We don't talk about that. Well, Maria would prefer that this wasn't discussed, but basically on the way to the toilets, someone (I am guessing a child) had left a little present in the middle of the floor. Poor Maria stepped in it before we realised. This turned into a bit of a nightmare because we had to find somewhere to clean her shoe. She was kind of balancing on one foot to try to prevent spreading it. There were queues in the toilets. It was just a traumatic experience that eventually resolved... but it definitely spun us out a bit for our return to the craziness of the crossing! While we were in the malls, Maria made a quick stop at Muji to buy a new t-shirt and I bought some mints and some peach flavoured sweets.

There are way too many pictures and videos of Shibuya crossing because it is so massively popular. I saw that the government is clamping down on tourist litter in this highly congested area, which is good. If we thought that Takeshita street was busy, then this video of Shibuya Crossing shows just how busy things can get. Remember that this was on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Right at Shibuya Crossing is the statue of Hachiko the dog - which is a touching tribute to a loyal dog that waited for his owner at the station for years after the owner's death. We took a pic of the statue, but there were queues of people waiting to take their photo with it, so we didn't hang around.

Shinjuku Observatory

We hurried back to the station which was heaving, and topped up our Suica cards and helped out some tourists who seemed to be struggling to understand the machines. With so many people in the station, just doing small things like topping up a travel card, suddenly seem epic and stressful.

We hopped on a train from Shibuya to Shinjuku station, which is apparently the world's busiest train station. It definitely felt like it, but beyond busy, was the maze that we had to negotiate to find where we wanted to go. I have to say, that for all of my feelings about Google, the Google Maps navigation was often a massive time-saver in these situations. On the other hand, it frequently got very confused in underground environments and often led us astray. Fortunately, in Tokyo, and with a clear external destination, it gave us enough pointers to exit the station in the right place.

On recommendation, we headed for the Tokyo Government Buildings, which host two observatory towers that look out across Tokyo. While most people head for the Tokyo Skytree, the observatory towers are free to access and are on the 45th floor, which is plenty high enough to get an exceptional view of Tokyo.

All of the walking and people and sensory overload had caught up, though. When we finally got to the buildings, we discovered that in the centre of an amphitheatre of concrete, there was an artificial grass plaza with some surrounding planters with trees and plants. Several people were sitting or lying down on the fake grass, so we decided to do the same and just collapsed in a heap and lay there for half an hour or so. I noticed a van on the other side of the plaza that was selling iced lemonade, so I grabbed a couple of those and we refreshed and recharged to visit the observatory.

The day was gettting on and I noticed that there were an increasing number of people moving towards the entrance to the building. It suddenly dawned on me that we might catch the sunset from up in the observatory. So we hurried across the plaza to discover a short queue had formed outside the entrance. We didn't have to wait too long, and had to do a quick bag check at security and then caught the elevator which was pretty packed.

Up in the observatory, it was air conditioned and spacious. Like surprisingly spacious. There was a cafe and gift shop that sold craft beers, so we each had a beer and Maria had a warm scone as we took in some of the scenery.

Tokyo is massive. It is impossible to describe. We knew this from when we flew into the city, but just standing and looking out across the city and taking it all in was breathtaking. We obviously have a fair number of pictures from up here. So I will share only a few.

As the time moved on, we realised we could catch the sunset. I took this picture just before we left the building. I realised that we could wait around for a little bit longer, but the queue for the elevator after sunset would likely get long and also the observatory floor had been gradually filling up with people coming to catch this view. Just before the sun dipped below the horizon we exited the building to see an enormous queue of people waiting to go up. What luck that we had missed that queue!

That fake grass looked appealing again. It was still hot and the beer had done its work. We went for another lie down, before we had to face Shinjuku station again to start heading back to the hotel.

Back to Asakusa

We expertly navigated through Shinjuku station to catch our train back to Karinmae. We walked back to the hotel from there, and despite having Google Maps to help us, ended up arriving at the APA hotel a block around the corner from our actual hotel. So confusing! We reckoned we were burning through money on food quite fast, and the picnic lunch we had from 7/11 had been quite good, so we popped down to 7/11 and grabbed some Bento salads, a 'Mont Blanc' coffee cream cheesecake dessert, a can of beer, and a jar of sake for one. We ate in the hotel room and let our aching feet recover.

Those sake jars - 'Ozeki One Cup' - were fantastic. We had a couple of them during the holiday. Budget sake for sure, but perfect with a budget bento box dinner. 😋