For some reason, Saf and I had convinced ourselves we were leaving Tokyo today.
Thank the Baby J that we checked our next AirBnb check-in time in the morning, literally 20 minutes before we were about to walk out of the door with suitcases packed, and saw that we weren’t due to leave till tomorrow.
Who let us loose on the world!?
Anyway, such a nice surprise to find out that we had an extra day in Tokyo, and so we had to make the most of the time. I’ve been using the Rough Guide to Tokyo to find out where to go, so we made a quick plan and went off as quick as we could.
First up, breakfast. I knew there was at least one Dominique Ansel bakery in Tokyo, so we decided that was as good of a place as any to start. This pomegranate cronut and a pistachio & raspberry work of art teamed with a sharp-as-knives grapefruit juice made a pretty good breakfast to start a day with.
Honestly, I don’t even know how we chose what to go for, everything looked amazing, and if we’d spent the day just eating in the bakery, I would have been pretty happy.
We walked through the main streets surrounding Harajuku. We wound up on Cat Street (still not sure it warrants the name as I saw exactly zero cats) stopping in a couple of shops, but mostly just wandering in the sun. Again, everyone seemed about 5-10 years younger than us, this is really getting a bit alarming at this stage – I still considered myself ‘young’ until this week 😩😩😩😩
About ten minutes down the street, we were invited into a promotional space for Samsung Galaxy’s new smart phone. Not having any strict time schedule, we decided to look in, and ended up having so much fun. Once we’d worked our way past the displays about the phone’s new features etc. we came to the star of the show – the Virtual Reality Simulators. Ugh. So good. There were four demonstrations, each with its own seat that moved along with what your headset was showing you. We both did the futuristic joy ride, and canoeing over Niagra Falls, I left the skeleton ride to Saf (literally the most ridiculous ‘sport’ other than curling) but then the opportunity came our way to try out ‘Flying With Dinosaurs’, which we’d been recommended at the entrance. Ooooooh mama. I couldn’t work out why the seats were so high off the ground, or why we were being strapped in so meticulously, but once the virtual dinosaur on the headset set off, all became violently clear. The chairs literally spun us upside down while in our eyes, we were close to falling off the back of the pterodactyls that we were ‘riding’.
Do you see what what I mean? Terrifying.
On our way out, once we could walk, we were presented with the pinkest of drinks you’ve ever seen. It was genuinely such a fun hour, and tbh the phone looks pretty good as well.
We stopped a few streets away for sushi – this time the more recognisable conveyor-belt kind, before moving on to the next stop on my itinerary. The Rough Guide had recommended Aoyama Reien (a cemetery) since apparently “anyone who is anyone is buried here”. A 20-minute walk past all the most luxury high fashion houses (Céline, Loewe, Givenchy, etc) took us to a pocket of peace against the backdrop of the busy city. The cemetery was so elegant in its traditional headstones, but what was so lovely was to see family members clustered round the graves of their relatives, eating lunch or laughing together, and just sharing the space in such a positive way.
Our penultimate stop on this day of fun was Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. There are so many vertigo-inducing buildings in Tokyo offering observation floors and viewing platforms, most of them quite cheap, but at the TMB you can take a lift up to the 45th floor for free to see the city from above. You are given the choice of the north or south tower – we chose south, and the view was amazing. At just around an hour before sunset, you could see hundreds of Tokyo-ites (Tokyons?) sat on blue mats in the parks below the towers, enjoying the last few minutes of sun.
Finally we headed to our last destination of the day – back to Palette Town in Aomi to find an arcade that is supposed to be a popular hangout for Tokyo’s younger adults (can you sense my desperation here?). Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) and to Saf’s great amusement, this didn’t seem to exist anywhere, but we found dinner in the Venus Fort shopping centre, so all’s well that ends well.
Claudia Bow 