Day 2 – Tokyo
Our first full day in Tokyo. Breakfast is included with our room at the Prince Gallery and the food and venue did not disappoint. Lots of options, both from western and eastern cuisine, and the views of the city are equally amazing.
After breakfast, we headed out on our first adventure of the day: a visit to the teamLab Borderless interactive art experience. The exhibit was a good distance from our hotel, so we opted to test our luck on the Tokyo metro. Fortunately, getting tickets was simple, as there is an English language option at the ticket machine in the station. Navigating the map was a bit more difficult, but each line is color coded and each station is numbered, so it turned out to not be any issue.
The teamLab Borderless exhibit was fantastic. There are about a dozen rooms, each with some variation of projected art, nature and physical structures to interact with. Hard to explain, but as an example, there is one room that is a collection of “lily pads” (disks attached to the floor with a 2-3 foot wire/spring). You can walk through the pads, with nature-themed art being projected from the ceiling. It’s tactile, it’s visual and there is music, so it really emerges your senses. We’ll be posting more about our Tokyo visit in the coming weeks and will share some photos about this experience.
We headed back to our hotel, after the art exhibit and then headed out to Ginza 6, a high-end shopping center that is a few metro stops away from our hotel. We had read that there was great food in the basement level of the mall, so we figured we could kill two birds with one stone, a little retail and a bite to eat. Unfortunately, we didn’t find much of either that appealed to us, so we walked around the Ginza neighborhood for a while and eventually found a fun sushi place that basically served you via a “lazy river” of sushi dishes. You just pluck them off the “boats” and pile the dishes up and get charged for the number of dishes you consume. The fish was very good quality and pretty cheap. Well worth the 30 minute wait!
From Ginza, we headed back to our hotel area and stopped by the Hie-jinja Shrine, located in a small park about 10 minutes from our hotel. The architecture of the buildings and the pathway decorations are a stark contrast to the high-rise buildings all around the park. Very “old meets new”.
We had our heart set on seeing the Robot Show in the Shinjuku neighborhood tonight. Our concierge had called and was informed that we could come around 8:30 for the 9:30 show and see if extra tickets were available. We showed up at 8:30 and were told to come back at 9:15. At 9:15 we came back (after a drink or two at one of the local bars) and were informed that they were sold out and that we should have come back at 9:00 (despite what the first person told us…..who was no longer to be found). Super disappointed that we couldn’t see the show, and unfortunately, the Show is closed when we are back in Tokyo at the end of our trip, so we will have to hit it next time!
The saving grace is that Shinjuku is super fun. Half Times Square and half carnival, it’s lit up like nowhere else and there is plenty to do. We even “won” our dog, Sauvi, a new toy from one of the arcades. After a while it was time to find some food, and we found a great little Ramen place in the area. Shinjuku is very crowded, so there was a quite a line to get in, but eventually we did and had a great experience, overall.
Back to the hotel for a nightcap and off to bed. Tomorrow we leave for Singapore!