After getting married in February, Matt and I embarked on our honeymoon together, spending ten days in Tokyo and a one day-trip to Kyoto.
During our time away, we really got the chance to explore this metropolis properly. We visited many different tourist attractions, but also enjoying days simply wandering the streets and exploring the vast networks of overground and underground trains that zig-zag across the city. While you could spend your whole life exploring Tokyo, and still not see it all, there are some wonderful highlights I’d love to share with you, so that when the world goes back to allowing free travel, you can earmark a few pages in your travel guide and enjoy Tokyo like we did. Japan is an exciting, surprising and beautiful country. I would strongly urge you to visit when you can.
Booking
Matt and I were very busy preparing for our wedding last year and so I needed a bit of help. I asked my friend Chloe who works at House of Travel on Hunter Street if she could prepare me a draft itinerary (I met her after an impromptu pot-luck was suggested on The Residents Facebook group forum last year). Chloe came up with some great suggestions, and after discussions we agreed that scaling back our grand ambitions and just focusing on Tokyo during our honeymoon would be a richer experience for Matt and I. Chloe was invaluable to the process of planning our honeymoon and we couldn’t have been happier with working alongside her. She really listened to our needs and helped us decide what best suited our trip.
Stay
Matt and I stayed at the Dai-Ichi Hotel in Ryogoku. We chose Ryogoku because it was close to my friend Phil’s and his wife Yoko’s apartment. However, we came to enjoy the peaceful and gentile pace of this middle-class suburb, which is east of the Sumida River. It is also very close to the Hokusai Museum, the sumo stadium (it was the off-season so we didn’t get a chance to experience this), Sumida City, and within walking distance of Taito City. Matt and I were extremely happy with our location and the simple comfort of our hotel. We even splashed out on a view of the Sky Tree.
Fly
Matt and I flew Air New Zealand and had such a brilliant experience flying with them. I also used the upgrade tool ‘One-Up’ on the way home and we traveled back sleeping on a sky couch. You really can’t beat the fantastic Air New Zealand staff. Our lovely air hostess called Matt ‘poppet’ which made me really giggle.
Eating
Eating is very easy in Tokyo. The food is incredible, especially if you enjoy seafood. Everywhere there are brilliant little places, tucked away around the corner and most sushi places are very good. Our favourite restaurants were a Pork Katsu restaurant close to the Ryogoku train station Ichikatsu, and Kazami in Ginza, a tiny ramen noodle shop. Although Tokyo has the most Michelin stars in the world, we didn’t splash out on a very expensive restaurant because we felt satisfied eating locally. However, Matt did go to a specialist sushi restaurant at the Toyosu fish market which was pricey, but well worth it for the experience. We also enjoyed pizza at a delicious place called Frey’s in Roppongi. In Taito we had an excellent coffee and tiramisu at Cafe Reise (in general, coffee in Tokyo isn’t that great).
See
Tokyo because is not actually one city - it’s 23 huge cities joined together. Of course, we couldn’t fit in everything that we wanted to do, but we made a really good attempt across the ten days we were in town. Each day, we tried to plan to visit the sites around which city we would base ourselves in. Some days it worked well, some days it didn’t (like the day we tried to visit the Tsukiji fish market which was closed, and I ran out data and had a mini-meltdown in the street). here are some of our top highlights:
The Hokusai Museum - My favourite cultural experience in Tokyo. The building is stunning in its own right.
Kiyosumi Gardens - one of the most relaxing places we visited in Tokyo with turtles, cranes and gorgeous wide ponds to explore.
Team Lab Planets Art Museum Tokyo and Team Lab Borderless - a digital art experience like no other - if you only can do one thing in Tokyo, make this it (we preferred Team Lab Planets if we had to choose just one).
Tokyo National Museum - see historic artefacts thousands of years old.
Meiji Jingu Shrine - which is situated in an incredibly lush, sprawling park.
Harajuku Park and Yoyogi Park - a great spot for spotting cherry blossoms, dogs and quirky locals.
Budokan and surrounding Kitanomaru Park - where we saw the most beautiful cherry bossom, free of crowds.
Akihabara - Official electric town - go here if you want to see crazy arcades, maid cafes and more!)
Shinjuku - Well worth a look, although skip the overpriced Robot Cafe - a major tourist trap (Shinjuku is a somewhat sleezier area so if you don’t fancy that, feel free to skip it)
Shibuya - Where the iconic Lost in Translation crossing is and lots of luxury shops.
Fancy shopping district Ginza (we visited Gina-Six - a huge shopping complex) and Hamarikyu Gardens
The slightly gritty Taito City and the Sensoji Temple (a bit touristy but still worth a visit)
Uber cool Sumida City and the Sky Tree, plus the huge Muji store (where I may have spent ¥31,000. Oops).
Tokyo Tower at night and Roppongi shopping and bar district.
Animals
Matt and I are animal obsessed. We visited Dog Heart Cafe in Shibuya, Cat Cafe Mocha in Akihabra, the dog exercise area at Harajuku Park and a very cute cafe which was also a dog daycare behind the Dai-Ichi Hotel. Dogs are a status symbol in Tokyo, some costing up to a million yen. As such, they’re extremely pampered which makes them very cute to fuss over.
Disneyland
One of our ‘must-do’ activities was to visit Disneyland in Tokyo. We opted for the more ‘mature’ DisneySea Park which reviews online rated as better than Disneyland if you are child-free like us. Buying tickets online was fairly complicated and despite several attempts ended up failing. Next time, I would try to buy online from New Zealand beforehand. Instead, our hotel concierge directed us to the Family Mart (like Seven Eleven) across the road where we could buy tickets from a machine. The shop owner was very nice and helped us out because the vending machine (was all in Japanese).
We caught the train to DisneySea and arrived around 11:30am. We tried to buy fast-passes but they were already allocated for the day. Unfortunately, that meant we had to line up for three hours for one particular ride. Aside for one or two rides, this park isn’t a thrills and spills kind of amusement park. Everything is quite gentle and mostly caters to families. As a couple, we personally preferred the more daring rides at Tivoli in Copenhagen, but visiting Disney in Tokyo was a real bucket-list thing we wanted to do. If you can get over the queues and enjoy the overall experience, it is a fun day.
Kyoto
Matt and I did a day trip to Kyoto. While many people advised we’d need more time, I personally enjoyed staying based in Tokyo and do not regret just making this a day trip. However, it was a very expensive day and because of the compressed timeframe we had to catch taxi’s everywhere. Taxi’s in Kyoto aren’t too dear, and talking to the Kyoto taxi drivers was absolutely one of our trip highlights. Almost all the drivers who spoke some English said they had been to New Zealand and loved it here. Our highlights were the Golden Temple and the Sho Gun’s Nijo Castle.
Nature
We were a bit early for the cherry blossom peak season but managed to see quite a lot of plum blossoms and some beautiful cherry bossoms nevertheless. Tokyo has many beautiful parks and it is really worth including these in your itinerary.
Friends
Matt and I were very fortunate to have my friend Phil and his wife Yoko take excellent care of us while we were in Tokyo. Phil picked us up from the airport and both of them dropped us back via train. They helped us with buying tickets to Kyoto, figuring out the train systems and Yoko even made us fresh sushi at their own home - a rarity in Japan where people eat out more than at each others houses. Our trip simply would not have been as special with the kind friendship of Phil and Yoko. It goes to show, if you know people in a place it is worth taking advantage of it and visiting them as soon as you can.
Conclusion
Matt and I were very fortunate to get our honeymoon in before things changed and New Zealand closed its borders to travel. We certainly do not take this extreme bit of luck for granted. I hope that you can find these tips and suggestions helpful for your future trip. Japan was the perfect place for us to travel to on our honeymoon. It sparked our curiosity, tantilised our tastebuds and opened our eyes to a different way of life. What else is travel for?!