Japan Travel (Part 1) - May 2025

We just returned from our 41 day visit to Japan. This included 19 cities in Japan, from the northern island of Hokkaido to the most southern island of Ishigaki, with short stops in Busan, South Korea, and Keelung and Taipei, Taiwan. With such a long trip, I'm slowly working on content and and a few photos to post. At this point, there will be seven parts to this blog content.

Tokyo

We started our trip in late March with a few days in Tokyo.  Our first day was filled with passing through immigration, finding an ATM for Yen withdrawls, retrieving a "Ninja" WiFi router at Narita Airport and purchasing Narita Express tickets to take us from Narita airport to the Tokyo rail station. From the station, we made our way to the Hyatt Centric Ginza - a short taxi ride from the station.

Once settled into our hotel room, we boarded a train from Ginza to the Chidorigafuchi Green Way. This half mile walk is lined with 230 flowering Cherry trees. We were still early in the Sakura season and the trees were just starting to bloom. Thus, the spectacular cherry blooms were a few weeks away.

During our short Tokyo stay, we visited TeamLabs Borderless, a digital immersion experience in Azabudai Hills, Tokyo. At this location, guests wander through many interconnected rooms, each with a different digital art presentation. There is no specific path through the experience so at times it seemed that we were somewhat lost. We did find the teahouse located in one of the rooms, where we had a short break and watched flowers bloom in our teacup. This is a popular visitor attraction and advance reservations are recommended for both Borderless and Teahouse entry.

Some Ginza Activities

When in Japan, it is difficult not to see and enter a Uniqlo department store. We stopped into Uniqlo’s Flagship Ginza store and made a few clothing purchases. Afterwards, we stopped at the Ginza Mitsukoshi store basement food court to find an eki-ben boxed lunch among the many hundreds of meal selections. These meal boxes are reasonably priced and provide a delicious take away meal.

9th Floor Patio of Mitsukoshi Department Store, Ginza

If you're in Ginza and a watch aficionado, there is a nearby Seiko Museum that shares the story of clock and watch development, starting in 1917. The museum tells a fascinating story of how Kintaro Hattori modernized watch development in Japan and led the company to become a worldwide timepiece manufacturer. Of course, there is also a nearby Grand Seiko watch store in Ginza that could tempt a purchase of a luxury watch (I resisted). I did stop at this store and inquired about arranging repair of an older Seiko Lasalle dress watch. As a post-trip update, the New Jersey Seiko service center was able to repair this 45 year old dress watch. 

Dining

We had two dinners during our Tokyo visit - each very different in experience. If you enjoy yakitori (grilled chicken skewers) and you're in Ginza, I recommend Ginza Yakitori Kyotanba, opened in 2024. I made advance reservations for the Omakase chicken dinner (about $110 USD per person, exclusive of drinks). Reservations are a must as there are only 22 seats.

This restaurant serves famous, rare and high-quality, bacteria-free Takasaka-dori chicken from the Kyoto area. This chicken is only available to few restaurants and the quality is so high that restaurants can offer raw chicken slices. I recently read that Yakitori restaurants must be reviewed before invited by the Takasaka-dori owner to be on the order list. Note that we were contacted by Ginza Yakitori Kyontanba prior to our dinner reservation and given the choice of including raw chicken or an alternative on our menu. We opted for a special chicken skewer in place of the raw chicken dish.

The Omakase menu was extensive. For those unfamiliar with Omakase, this menu is a Chef's choice dinner and each serving size is small, similar to a tasting menu.

Chouchin or Chochin Yakitori
Best to Internet Search for a Description

Our second dinner was at Ichiran Shimbashi for a traditional ramen dinner. We ate here back in 2019 and enjoyed the experience.  Your ramen selection is made via a vending machine, located at the entry to the restaurant. The machine dispenses a ticket with your ramen selection and you are then seated at a small cubicle. Seating may take a while if all cubicles are filled. After presenting your ramen order ‘ticket” to the server in the window in front of your cubicle seat, a window shade rolls up and your ramen bowl is delivered to you. The window shade immediately rolls down to give you privacy. A bowl of Ichiran ramen is about $8 USD. You can order a beer or other beverage when you present your “ticket” to your server. 

Hyatt Centric Ginza

We had Hyatt points and were able to use them for this hotel. Centric hotels are placed in locations near local attractions and active nightlife. Ginza is just the right location for this hotel. The Centric brand tends to market to younger clientele with its modern, bright and minimalistic public areas and rooms decor. We don’t necessarily fit the marketing focus, but we enjoyed our stay and the buffet breakfast had many delicious offerings. Moreover, breakfast was reasonably priced at about $25 USD per person - much less than a major US hotel buffet breakfast.

Yokohama

We had a brief stop in Yokohama mid-way through the cruise. It was raining during our day visit and we spent the morning at the CupNoodles Museum. There, we learned how CupNoodles was invented by Momofuku Ando, how the product evolved in Japan, to the US market and, finally, to space travel. We also had advance reservations to create our own CupNoodles. This was fun as we added our artwork to the container exterior and then selected the soup base and condiments for our personalized soup. 

Recreation of Original Lab of Momofuku Ando 

Finished Product in Crush-Proof Bag

The founder of CupNoodles struggled with repeated business failures before developing a method for flash-frying and manufacturing convenient noodle packages. Momofuku learned from his business failures and successes and shared the below principles:

• Discover something completely new
• Find inspiration everywhere
• Consider everyone as a potential user
• Investigate all perspectives
• Question assumptions
• Never settle for the ordinary