2017 Japan Trip – Day 11

On day 11, we would be travelling out from Takayama to Tokyo. We used the free shuttle bus facility by Takayama Kanko Hotel that morning and waited only about 20 minutes or so for our train. The journey consisted of a train ride to Nagoya and another train to Tokyo station. Note: when reserving a shinkansen train from Kyoto or Nagoya towards Tokyo, remember to request seat on the left side. That is because Mount Fuji will be on the left side, and vice versa get seats on the right side when travelling out from Tokyo to Kyoto. This time we actually forgot to ask that when made the reservation, but thankfully the kind officer gave us seats on the left side 🙂

Day 11

Again, do not fall asleep on the train from Takayama to Nagoya. I only managed to take some footage from about half way through the ride. We were so grateful for able to see Mount Fuji with its snowy cap clearly on the ride to Tokyo. Before our trip, I have read many people say that often it’d be too cloudy to see that snowy cap. So, I kind of not letting myself too hopeful about seeing it, but there it was! 🙂 When we first got a glimpse of a mountain with white tip from far distance amongst many other mountains, hubby commented: “Are you sure that one is Mount Fuji? “. And, I had to admit he was correct, I wouldn’t know for sure. But as we got closer and it came to full view, everyone started to take pictures then you know it is indeed the majestic Mount Fuji. We also got another glimpse of it on our way to Haneda Airport before departing the country, truly grateful for these chances.

Anyway, our plan today was to get to Tokyo around 1 pm then went straight to Disney check in counter at Maihama Bay. The first things we noticed as we got to Tokyo were it was noticeably warmer and huge crowds in the station. Because it would be too early to check in to the hotel, but we could leave our luggage there and have them delivered to our hotel later. We were super excited to spend the night at Tokyo DisneySea Hotel MiraCosta that night. We had left it until too late to book accommodation here and I had to literally monitor the web everyday to finally be able to get a room. So, we had our expectation up high on this – but anyway, I’ll do another post just for the accommodation next.

Once we left our luggage, we went back to Tokyo Station then to Asakusa. Our mistake was we used the JR to get to Asakusa-bashi instead of taking the subway to Asakusa which is closer to Sensoji Temple. Oh boy, that was a long walk from Asakusa-bashi to the temple, in which half way through I almost wanted to walk back and gave up. But, in the end we persistently walked to Sensoji Temple. And to make thing worse, we did not have pocket WiFi to access Google Maps. A really big thank you to all the convenience store chains in Japan where they provide free WiFi connection. We stopped at couple of convenience stores to get drink, access to Google Maps, and screen shot our walking journey 😀

What a relief to finally get to Sensoji Temple, but we actually did not spend long time here. Took a few pictures, walked around the market stalls then headed back towards subway station. On the way to the subway station, we stopped by a ramen shop for quick dinner. Then we made a quick stop at Akihabara, where hubby browsed some shops quickly before headed back to theDisneySea MiraCosta Hotel.

What we ate on Day 11

We had our big breakfast at Takayama Kanko Hotel, as can been on the previous post. When we got to Nagoya, we bought these ekiben for lunch – total ¥2,474. Hubby said his unagi bento was the least delicious unagi he had in Japan. My karaage chicken was delicious and generous portion as well. We also bought a pack of chocolate Pocky for ¥162 for dessert 🙂

While exploring the market outside of Sensoji Temple, we bought one rice cracker with seaweed ¥120 – but totally forgot to take picture of it 😅

And, these were our delicious warming dinner. The broth was such a delight and the owner was very friendly. The gyoza were delicious with crispy skin. The restaurant detail can be found below and we recommend this ramen place if you are nearby.

Ramen Asakusatai

2 Chome-19-12 Kaminarimon, Taitō-ku, Tōkyō-to 111-0034, Japan

I could not find their website, but this page have a great reference on the restaurant. They even have details on how to put your order through the vending machine. I wished we had learned about this before we came to Japan 🙂

Lastly, we bought this from a vending machine at Maihama Station before proceeding to the monorail to our hotel. I thought this was melon juice, turned out it’s soft drink with melon flavor 😅 Actually we also bought some bread in the convenience store at the station for breakfast the next day, but forgot to take pictures also.