Day 7: Today was rainy, which wasn’t great considering most of our activities were outside. In the morning, we took a trip to the Shibuya Crossing and the surrounding shopping centers. My friend and I visited the Pokémon store, the Adidas store, and then got good ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. Following that was a brief trip to Harajuku, which lasted about an hour. After quickly reboarding our tour bus, we made the third stop of the day at the Meiji Jingu Shrine. In the early afternoon, our group walked around the forested paths of the Shrine, passing under giant Tori-i gates and exploring the main shrine. There was some sort of drum ceremony occurring, so the largest building was off limits for the time. After, I bought a good luck charm and we left for our fourth stop of the day. We arrived at Senso-ji Shrine around 3 PM and were there for an hour and a half. Outside of the main shrine was a long pathway of shops built in the traditional red shrine architecture. My friend and I got chopsticks, his were custom-engraved, and that took up most of our time there. Surprisingly, we didn’t go into the main shrine, but the rest of it was cool enough. At 5 PM, we went to Kamezawa and had a good hot pot dinner. The restaurant, Hana no Mai Edo Tokyo Museum, was situated underneath the train line, so occasionally the building would rumble as the train passed above. There, I tried a full bite of wasabi. Not some small piece, but a full chunk. It was very hot to say the least… For the last part of our day, we took a trip to the Tokyo Skytree. Due to the high price for tickets, my friend and I decided to stay at the bottom instead of ascending. We visited the aquarium and then shopped for a bit before heading back to our hotel and calling it a night.
Day 8: I believe that today was considered our “free day”. We started this free day off with a trip to teamLabs Planets, a science and tech art museum with some pretty mind-bending views. You walked through water, up a waterfall, jumped on moon-like, but also soft, padding which made you feel like you were weightless, a room full of dangling lights which other people could control, and a room with a spinning picture which made many people dizzy. In our 3 hours of free time, my friend and I left the group and spent our time in the Tokyo city center. We explored multiple shopping malls, the Samsung store, where we found a camera that cost 1,969,000 Yen, and went to a bookstore, all in the Ginza area. At 5, we made a trip back up near Senso-ji to a Tea Ceremony house. We all got dressed up in kimonos (I had a black one with dragons) and ate candies and made matcha tea while using all of the old Japanese techniques and customs. We knelt on the grass mats, mixed our tea, and spun the cup twice to the right by the customs of the Tea Ceremony. It was a very cool experience. Also, my friend bought a real (dulled) knife.
Day 9: This was the final main day of our trip! We had a couple of main points of our day, and the first one was at the Hamarikyu Gardens in central Tokyo. Although it did rain a bit near the end, the gardens were very nice looking, and the lake gave good photo opportunities. It was weird to see these gardens and a quaint, serene lake with high-rise buildings in the distance behind it. After this, we boarded the bus and took a trip over to the Tokyo Tower, a Eiffel-Tower-esque building with a mall at its base. We had a couple of hours there, so my friend and I got food and raced in a VR boating simulator. Before this, though, we also got a trip to the observation deck, which had a small store, a small shrine, and a small glass floor to stand on and look down at a crazy fall. Our next, smaller part of this day was a 30-minute walk around the Kokyo Gaien National Garden, where we spent most of the time going to the bathroom and looking in the A/C’d building in the corner of the gardens. After this quick excursion was some free time around the Akihabara Electric Town. We first got a suitcase for my friend’s souvenirs, but then he felt sick, so he went back to the bus for a while. After we were both ready to leave the bus again, us, a couple of the chaperones, some other kids went to the local Cat Cafe with many cute cats, which we fed and played with for a bit before our time expired in Akihabara. We had a quick buffet dinner in Kameido at a place called Stamina Taro NEXT before going to the final excursion on our great Japan trip- Karaoke. Right down the road from the buffet place, we spent an hour and a half singing our hearts out to many songs and getting very embarrassed, but it was a great way to end our amazing trip..
Day 10: After packing our bags and checking out of our rooms, a 12-hour flight awaited all of us. I’m not gonna lie, this one was pretty easy. I just slept for most of it and by the time we landed in Toronto, I barely used any of my content. After another quick two-hour flight to Newark Intl Airport, I got a ride back home and was in my bed by midnight.
Thus ends my amazing Japan trip. I wish I had more days there, but also after being stuck with my friend for 10 days, I wanted to go home a bit…