TOKYO: Takeshita St, Shibuya, Electric Town, Shinjuku, Disneyland, Train to Shizuoka, and more!

A stop at the Nippondaira Hotel in Shizuoka before taking a few days to explore Tokyo. 20 years later after the first time in Tokyo as an adult, it’s time to bring the kids for the first time! From Takeshita Street to Shinjuku to Akihabara to Shibuya and more…!

I think we’re good yeah what’s up y’all I’d like to welcome you back to another the master of many travels moment and we’re going to talk about Japan this time so the first time I went to Japan I was a toddler and I went with my mom the

Second time was back in 2004 and I went as an adult and this time I got to experience the Metro where I felt really really tall I got to experience the culture um I got to experience shuu Crossing um I got to experience the night life the Koke bars and the I mean

You name it and one of the other things that I loved about Tokyo was the technology and I’m out here trying to do my little tech report on their technology because I actually thought they were maybe a year or two ahead of us and this is me

Trying to uh report on their technology now what we have here is is a camera so you look do that take a picture of it you show it just like that we have a phone call you had the phone also talk on the phone this is where technology is going these

Days you heard it here first yeah you definitely heard it here first um and one of the other things that I was very intrigued by uh Japan and and and the culture is that I was working on music back in the States and I pr some music

Out in the world um you know it was the first first time I’m learning and stuff like that and without any advertisement whatsoever I was getting a lot of downloads and interest from Japan and so I went to Japan and I had my CDs and I was handing them out and I

Remember going to this hip-hop store and just handing my CDs out and they had their speakers out on the busy streets of of Tokyo and I Remember by the time I got out I heard my music bumping on the city streets of Tokyo and if you listen closely you can hear my Song wow I still get Goose around so the next time I went to Tokyo was in 2010 and then I went again in 2017 where I also got to experience you know the the Imperial Palace and the food uh the culture I got the experience the night

Life um but just recently uh just matter of weeks ago um I got an invite from a family member who was getting married in Japan so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to take my kids for the first time to Japan and this is that trip okay so we flew into Tokyo

International at hanita which is right in Tokyo and the first night night we stayed at a hotel that was basically directly out of the terminal um we were just able to cross a bridge and we’re in the room uh so I got to say the the hotel

Itself is pretty nice but the rooms were hella small um I mean they had these baby cribs in the room because I put child in the reservation not knowing that my 8-year-old and 10-year-old child will be thought of as a baby that needs a baby crib I mean my my 10-year-old

Daughter is 56 so um so we managed and um it wasn’t a big deal and we were able to stay there just for one night until we were able to move on to our next destination okay so the next destination was shizuoka and that was the location of the wedding my

Family for the first time was able to experience it a bullet train which is great and once you get to shizuoka to get to the hotel which is on the top of a mountain you have to catch about a 30 minute bus ride to the location um so this hotel is actually

Listed as a three star hotel but I got to say the views are five-star and I mean five star and I’ll tell you why that is why you get views of Mount Fuji and they are unbelievable if you are on that side of the hotel and I definitely recommend if you’re going to

Stay here that you get the rooms with the spectacular views I mean you can do yoga with these spectacular views you can have have some dessert and plum wine and and and and and just sit back and relax with these spectacular views but if you are on the

Other side of the hotel and you have a room on the other side of of the hotel it’s going to feel like you are in a three star hotel um because the rooms feel like it and your views feel like it now the chapel itself is a very nice

Chapel but what makes it even better is you guess it the views so once you walk into the chapel and you make your way up the stairs and you turn around that corner and you have a clear day those views are spectacular and it definitely enhances the moment of a

Beautiful wedding which uh the bride and groom had it was an unbelievable wedding so after the wedding it was time to head back into Tokyo uh my kids were able to experience life on the Metro we stayed at the Grand Prince Hotel Shin Takanawa um this hotel is listed as a

Fourstar uh I can see where it gets the fourstar the rooms were a little dated at least the ones that we stayed in uh I did have some issues with the room um but for the most part it did the job and for the price point it was

Pretty cheap um it wasn’t bad at all uh the views were the views of the city um so there wasn’t anything spectacular with the views but I would say that the hotel in shizuoka uh felt a lot better um but I will say that this hotel was on a uh

There was it was a a grand Prince or Prince Hotel complex so they had like a I guess an aquarium a bowling alley they had a tennis court where my kids were able to play tennis in the morning um and uh it was very convenient to the metro station so no issues with

The location itself um the hotel was was like I said it was it did its job um and and the location and we were there to explore so we didn’t need to stay in like the the best hotel one of the things that my kids loved about this hotel believe it or not

Was the 7-Eleven on the bottom floor they love the the the little ice cream packs that they had that they don’t sell here in the states and then especially the like sushi rolls and the rice snacks that they had um they would rather eat there than eat anywhere else

While we were on our trip okay we started off exploring Ginza now Ginza is an area where they have a lot of upscale stores you can think of Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive um but the buildings are actually unbelievable I think uh when you see like the Gucci

Stores and the you know the Seiko and um just the outside and design is just uh very intriguing okay so for all of you that have seen the 3D billboard on social media or on the news you can find that in Shinjuku uh we definitely have to see

That and and then if you also seen the the Godzilla poking his head out of one of the buildings you’ll also find that in Shinjuku and then we headed over to takasha street so takash street is this area where you have a lot of stores to

Go shopping uh a lot of food a lot of um cafes and then they had a Daiso and my kids love Daiso so you know we had to go in Daiso um they did have the caf as I mentioned and my kids did want to go

Check out the Dog Cafe and we did go into this Dog Cafe they weren’t as excited after the fact um but they they did enjoy it so after that we did some walking eventually wanted to get down to Shibuya Crossing so we actually walked from takash Street all the way down to

Where the Shibuya Crossing is and obviously that is a must if you’re going to go to Tokyo it is just an experience because you’ll never go through a crosswalk quite like This so the biggest hit of all the locations in Tokyo to believe it or not was akih harbar and the reason being is all the crane games I mean you have floors and floors and floors of crane games and music games and arcade games so for an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old

And then our dollar was so so strong there that it wasn’t that much money to um you know play over and over and over again it was a big hit for Them so after 5:00 we headed over to Tokyo Disney and you might be asking why after 5 well because the tickets were only $42 us um after 5:00 the tickets drop and I got to say Disneyland Anaheim is right down the street and I don’t go because that is

Expensive and um so to take my kids to Tokyo Disney after 5:00 for about $40 a ticket that was a Win I mean I will say that Tokyo Disney doesn’t quite live up to the expectations of the a Disney World or Disneyland in Anaheim but um but it was nice and and I got to say for the price point we would go back and one of the things that I love

About Tokyo is that you can see here that there’s a lot of people that are trying to get on the Metro after leaving Disneyland so what I’m used to in other places that I’ve been is just the crowd just trying to just rush and get on the

Metro so they can get home but to see all these people in a single file line respecting each other’s space and waiting their turn to get on the Metro is just something that I wish we can do all over the world okay the next day we decided to do

A one-day tour of Tokyo and I thought this was the best way to see Tokyo if you don’t have a lot of time the tickets were about 135 or $140 a person um for some that can be steep but it does come with uh lunch and transportation and admission

To all the places that you’re going to so uh in a nutshell I think it is actually a good price because it is a a full day so we started off exploring some of the palaces including the Imperial Palace which was beautiful we got some matcha ice cream that my kids really

Enjoyed they fed us some JFC some Japanese Fried Chicken uh we went to the San Rio store which was while we were walking to go see some of the additional palaces and shrines um including walking through one of the uh popular shopping Areas and um you know during our walk there was this lady who was singing and I was having a really hard time so I I needed I needed to uh help the audience enjoy the music so um I did this I got an Idea The you have that’s I mean she probably sounded great to other people but um yeah I was having a difficult time okay so our next stop on the tour was Tokyo Sky Tree and this is where you can go up to the top and go to the observatory and you can

See the most populous city in the world Tokyo the downstairs uh they have some areas where you can hang out and eat um across the way they got more crane games I love playing these games okay so after the Tokyo Sky Tree it was time to head to our last stop and

Big shout out to Taka who was our brilliant tour guide he was great I got to give him a big shout out so when you’re in Tokyo you would never think that there is a Statue of Liberty um there is one similar to this in Paris um obviously the United States has

The uh uh the biggest one that I’ve ever seen so it was just um something to see and this was actually the first time that I seen the Statue of Liberty in Tokyo we then headed over to the Tokyo dock where we were able to board our

Crews and I got to say it was the perfect perfect Sunset to finish our day cruising across the Tokyo bay um also finishing our trip with family uh and having a a great trip at that starting off with a with a great wedding and finishing off um

Touring the city of Tokyo till next time