Tokyo in 24 Hours?! Did We FAIL Our Ultimate Japan Challenge?
We’re in Tokyo and we have 24 hours to explore the city. Let’s go. [Music] [Laughter] We’re starting our day today in the Asakusa area of Tokyo. Um, specifically with the Senoji Temple. This temple is the oldest in Japan, and we wanted to start our day here because the crowds can get pretty insane here during the day. One downfall of being here in the morning is that there’s a ton of shops and food stalls, but a lot of them don’t open until 10:00. So, we’re here at about 8:00 in the morning. We just wanted to see the temple, but if you’re wanting to shop, then you need to be you need to get here a little bit later in the morning. But, it is absolutely packed here once everything is open and it’s really nice to see and walk around when there’s not a lot of people here. Yeah. On the Nakami Dori Street. This is one of the like oldest markets in Tokyo. Lots of tourist trap stuff and a lots of food. And there’s special rules about the food where you can’t really eat on the street. Um, and one thing that I highly recommend that you get in this area is melon pond. We had some yesterday and it was delicious. It’s like if shortbread was a bread. Like if a shortbread cookie was a loaf a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread. Yeah. There you go. All right, let’s go explore the temple. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] We hopped on the Ginsza line and um we’ve gotten off at Bueno. So, we’re now in Bueno Park and there’s a huge pond on the south end of the park that is full of water lotuses. Now, I thought that they were water liies in my head, but they’re water lotuses. I thought that they might be in bloom right now, but I think we may be a little late in the season, but they were in bloom. They would have these huge pink lotus flowers, but you can hardly tell there’s even water here. There’s It is just so chalk full of the lotuses. So, it’s really it’s a sight to see. And it’s just this huge expanse of leaves. [Applause] I think that’s a little small for you, Brian. It’s perfect size. There. There. Does it rock back and forth? Oh, yeah. Not much. Wow. It’s a rocking panda. [Music] So, inside of Weno Park is Everyone’s Cafe. My cafe. My cafe. Your cafe. Everyone’s cafe. This is probably a more expensive breakfast, but we’re in a beautiful setting inside the park and the vibes are tonight. I got some fluffy pancakes with berries and some bananas. Then Brian got a delicious looking breakfast plate that has avocado toast because I’m a millennial. You’re a millennial. And then some delicious looking fried eggs and some ham and sausage and seaweed and carrots. And we each got I got a coffee and Ryan got a nice tea. So, we’re going to power up for our day with our food and we’re going to the National Museum. Yes. To the Tokyo National Museum. So, we’ve made our way into the Tokyo National Museum. And I recommend buying tickets online, but if you do, you don’t get these really cool ticket designs. And and we only waited like 10 minutes to get the tickets anyway. So, we have about an hour or less. And what building? What exhibit are we seeing? We’re going into the Hong Kong building, which is just like the I think it’s the National Gallery. The Japanese gallery. Yeah. So, cuz we’re short on time, I think that’s going to be the best one to pop into. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, we spent about an hour in the National Gallery, and there’s probably there’s at least two more buildings that we didn’t get to see yet. And they’re constantly changing out the exhibits here. We got the famous face dude. I think his name is like Bonu, the he’s he was an actor, a Kabuki, I think, actor. M. And then for my Animal Crossing people out there, they had the little statue from the museum that you can get. He wasn’t on display right now, but I thought that was really cool. And then I didn’t know that the wave painting, the famous wave painting was a stamp. Wood block print. Yeah, that’s cool. Really? You did it? No, I didn’t know that. Yeah. [Music] I don’t know. These gardens look a little bit like plastic. I like plastic. Hopefully it gets better. I find the stone work in here to be very interesting because it reminds me of Peru and how the Incas would put all the stones together. I’m sure it was around the same time period. You know where I feel like we are again? Sexy woman. Sexy woman. Just like a gent not gentle a hill and stones. Is this another guard house? It is. We’re still climbing. Brian and I have switched backpacks to give his shoulders a break. Will we make it to see gardens and not just stone? Is this finally it? We’re getting our zone minutes. Oh, I’ve been getting zon for a long time. That’s cuz your resting heart rate is so low. You’re like almost not even alive. My heart is full of love. You have a big heart, Brian. So, from the Tokyo National Museum Park, we hopped on the JR Yamanote line, which is going to be our primary line for the day. And we got off at Tokyo Station and entered the Imperial Palace East Gardens. I kind of thought you’d be able to see something without actually going in the palace grounds. The only way you can go in the palace grounds is by a guided tour and they only do two a day. I think it’s at 9:00 and 3:30. If you go through the gardens, there are like guard houses that you can see and they’re really pretty. Yeah, you can see some of the architecture. Um, but generally if like if you go to Ueno Park, I feel like you don’t need to come into these gardens cuz there’s we haven’t seen anything exciting honestly. and we just been walking up hills. I don’t know. It’s a nice green space, but like it’s not really worth it in our day. So, if you want to see the palace, definitely do the guided tour. You get to see some cool rocks in here, though. Lots of rocks. So, lots of really cool rocks. If we hadn’t have been to Peru in the last 2 years, I think these were cool. I mean, they’re still cool, don’t get me wrong. Just happy for the shade. Yeah, it it it is very cool in there if you want a break from the the sun. Oh my gosh, this is such a steep hill. I don’t It’s You just You can never tell on camera, but like it’s a pretty steep hill. We’ve got a nice building over here. Some classic Japanese architecture. Now, you may have noticed that my shirt has Japanese on it. And I actually got this shirt at Epic Universe, not in Japan. Now, in the States, we call this Boo, but in Japan, Boo’s name is Teresa. Teresa. Teresa. [Music] It’s like 2 ft long. [Music] So, when you first walk into the gardens and then there’s a fork in the road by the guard house by the big long guard house. Go to the right. Don’t go to the left. Yeah, the right will take you to the gardens with the irises and the the fish and you don’t have to climb a hill. That’s what we recommend. Tokyo Station. I did not know that Tokyo Station was this grand brick building. It kind of looks like a palace. It does. [Music] down. [Music] Insane down here. Like talk about stimulus. How are you enjoying Tokyo Station, Brian? It’s slightly overwhelming. We had to wander a bit, but we found Character Street. And yeah, there’s like 8 million people down here. We found the Gibli store. [Music] [Music] We were trying to have a jolly time and go to Character Street in Tokyo Station. Now, I don’t know if it’s cuz it’s Saturday or if it’s always like that, but it was like another layer of hell down there. This is fine. It was like 80° and it was just in that section. Elbow to elbow. Yeah, it was only 80° in that one part and like I couldn’t even I couldn’t even look at the stuff because it was just so awful in there. So maybe try to go to character street like I don’t know in the early morning on a weekday or something. Not on a Saturday afternoon. But we did stop at the Kirby Cafe and get a little tiramisu. He came in a cute little espresso cup and he there’s a little Kirby upside down in it. He’s going to Dreamland. We are waiting in line to eat lunch at a restaurant called Epipo. We tried to go to a different ramen restaurant and we forgot that it’s like a Michelin star and they were like reservation only. We were like oh Justin Bieber ate there. Oh. So anyway, so we’re going to eat here for lunch. We are in Ginsza now. So we took the Yamote line to I can’t remember the station. Aka Yaka. We’ll put it on the screen. So yeah, we’re going to have some ramen here in a little bit. This is the tiramisu from the Kirby Cafe in Tokyo Station, Character Street. I really appreciate how they so that you don’t have to get the the cup dirty and it’s a little espresso cup and it says Kirby Cafe right here. Cute. Cute. The name of the item was like Kirby going to Dreamland. Is it Yamo? How deep does the cup? It goes all the way down. Oh, okay. It is yellow. As Aubrey just said, it is messy to do it in this cup. So, I’m going to take it out of the cup. I’m going to enjoy this dessert from the Kirby Cafe. [Music] Behind me is the flagship store of Unilo. Now, Unilo is starting to come into the states, but this building behind me is over seven stories, seven floors of clothing. So, I believe this is the world’s largest unic. [Music] Something interesting about the Unilo over here in Japan, and I’ve seen this at all of them, is that they sell plants. It’s called Unilo Flower. That little Japanese me. [Music] We are in the Ginsa Lion Beer Hall in Ginsa. And this is the oldest beer hall in all of Japan. It dates back to to the 1930s. The decor is original. They’re famous for their one pour beer. So, we wanted to check it out on this rainy afternoon in Tokyo. And as we’ve learned is if it’s something popular, there’s going to be a line. There’s going to be lines for everything. We weren’t really expecting that. And if there’s not a line for it, then there might be a reason why. So, yeah. We’re going to drink this beer in this in this beautiful building and then we’ll move on with our day. Is it nice? It’s crisp. When we walked in here, it felt like a German beer hall. It was inspired by German beer halls. So, you can like feel that heritage when you’re in here. Also, something to note about it being all original is that the building survived the World War II bombings. I didn’t know this, but Tokyo was pretty much destroyed during World War II. A lot of the temples and buildings like have have been rebuilt since then, but this building survived the bombing. So it is fully original. [Music] We’ve taken another short metro ride and we are now at Zojo Gi Temple. Now the gate for this temple is the oldest wooden structure in Tokyo. So that’s pretty cool. The gate dates back to the 1600s. The temple itself was destroyed during World War II, so it has been rebuilt since then. But it is very peaceful here and I we’ve seen some I think they’re monks walking around. So I think this is like an active place where monks live. Whereas since I I don’t know if they do live there and you can see right behind the temple is Tokyo Tower which used to be the tallest tower in Japan until they built Tokyo Skytree. You can see it looks a little bit like the Eiffel Tower but it’s red and white. I I feel like it’s not as tall as the Eiffel Tower, but I don’t know now being being up closer to it. It it it I think it does. I feel like you can’t go up as high on it as you can for the Eiffel Tower. Um I don’t know. Maybe you can. But anyway, you got a lovely view of the the old and the new right here. That’s all I have to say. [Music] [Music] What you don’t see is how much traveling that we have to go through these stations. It’s 535 and we’ve watched 25,500 steps. I’m I’m at I think I’m over 27,000. So, we made it to Maji Jingu Shrine with 10 minutes to spare until the gates close. So, we’re going to see what all we can see before we get kicked out. These uh dusk vibes here are something spooky. It makes me feel like I’m in a studio Gibli movie right now. Where’s Todoro? These trees are massive and they perfectly arch over the pathway. It feels like a tempered rainforest in here. It does. It’s like like the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. These must be some of the oldest trees we’ve seen in town. [Music] They’ve started playing the very polite. All entrance gates have been closed. Please proceed to the nearest exit. But we haven’t seen the shrine yet. This is a huge park. Like bigger than the Imperial Palace Gardens that we went to, I think. [Music] So, we made it in, but they said you could only go in to pray. No photos. I was surprised. But we did it. Yeah. And now we get to walk out of this maze. And the shrine is absolutely beautiful. Yeah. This is my favorite one that we visited. So I’m glad we ran here. Yeah. And this seems to be the one they’re most enforcing the like closing time, which today is it was at 6:30. Yes. Cuz it’s getting dark now. We get to find our way out. [Music] Hello. We have made it to the Parkco building which if you go to floor six Yes. That is the place to be because it has the Nintendo store, it has Godzilla, and it has Pokemon Center with Mewtwo in it. Dream come true right here. It’s super crowded. It is super crowded, but we’ve been more crowded places. Like, this isn’t as crowded as Character Street. Like, you can actually shop here. So, we’re in Shabuya and then Parkco is like a huge shopping mall. Yeah. And then all the little It kind of feels like a big department store, but it’s it’s a mall. So, let’s walk around. [Music] Yes. Yes. [Music] [Applause] [Music] All right. So, it’s raining. I’m carrying a bag of stuff we bought at the Nintendo store. And we’re going to cross the Shabuya Scramble. Let’s do it. Here we go. I just stepped in a puddle. [Music] If you’re looking for a way to watch The Crossing for cheap, go to Starbucks at night. On the second floor, you have to purchase a drink, which whatever, and you get to watch the crossing, probably the closest to the crossing as possible. What are your thoughts on the crossing, Brian? It’s smaller than I thought. I agree. I’m sort of unimpressed. I will say with umbrellas, it’s really terrifying to cross because everybody’s like running out from everywhere and then running into you with your umbrella. Yeah. So, that’s not fun. But Starbucks coming in clutch with the Shaguya view. Round two of trying to cross the crossing. Oh, here we go. My umbrella is probably going to turn inside out. Scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble. There’s not as many people out here anymore. It’s about 10:30 at night, but there’s still a decent amount. Yeah, the crosswalk is not as wide as I thought it was. Thought it was a lot bigger of an intersection. How do you rate your experience? My feet hurt. Out of 10. [Music] Hello. We left off in Shabuya. Shinjjuku. Well, we made it to Shinjuku, but that doesn’t mean that that’s where we left off. Yeah, we did. We You’re right. We left off in Shabuya. We made it to Shinjuku and that’s where it went downhill. Now, something to give advice is that the public transportation ends at midnight. Once it gets midnight, then you’re kind of stuck. And that’s why we got stuck in Shinjuku. Yeah. And after all, it was a 24-hour video. Let’s talk about things that went well and let’s talk about things that didn’t go well. Okay. So, something that went well, I think that a Sakasawa was wonderful to do in the morning. Mhm. Before all the stands opened up, before all the crowds got in there, the shrine was beautiful and peaceful. What’s something that you think went well? I think that also the other two temples we visited or shrines, we visited them in the last hour that they were open and I think that that was nice. However, Maji Shrine, we did that was a little too late. We walked in 10 minutes before they closed. Couldn’t spend much time there. But still, I really enjoyed the atmosphere at that time of day. And then stuff that went wrong. I don’t think that seeing the Imperial Palace spontaneously is a good idea. No, you cannot go into the Imperial Palace without a reservation. And it was really kind of challenging to find where the gardens actually were cuz everything is spread out. So, we wandered for more than an hour. Wasting time. Yeah. And then food. Just Tokyo is full of lines and if you’re not planning your food wisely, you’re going to be stuck waiting at least an hour for food at most places or you’re you’re going to be so hungry you won’t want to wait at all. Which is probably why the convenience stores are so popular because number one, we didn’t want to go to a restaurant that we didn’t know anything about cuz we didn’t want we didn’t trust the quality. So, there were plenty of restaurants off the street that like were open and had seats, but we didn’t know if we wanted to eat there and also had trouble deciding what to eat. So, those were issues. But, yeah, if there’s a restaurant that you want to go, definitely plan when you’re going to go there and plan to wait in a line to get in. What was your favorite thing that you saw? Favorite thing that I saw? I mean, probably walking through the Maji Shrine grounds at that hour when it was raining. It’s like I kept saying like I felt like I was in my neighbor Todoro that and there was no one around. That was like the first time in days that we had been in a place where there was nobody else around. So, it was a really nice break. Also, I really enjoyed the area right around that shrine as we were walking around. I think that would be a good place to hang out and eat, but we had to move on to our next location at the time. We weren’t hungry for dinner yet. What about you? I really liked the Saka when it was early morning. Peaceful, tranquil. The Japanese are to themselves. They’re not loud people like Americans. Definitely. And so I really appreciated that in the early morning. If you’re ever in Japan, if you’re ever in Tokyo, I recommend picking a specific area for the day and not trying to put all of it in 24 hours. Also, a couple times during the day, there were delays on the trains, and the sites that we wanted to see were often like a 10 to 15 minute walk from the train stations. And when you’re doing a big long day, a 15-minute walk is just it’s too much on top of everything else. So, absolutely. Yeah. I was prepared for walking. I was not prepared for how much we were going to be walking. Yesterday, we clocked 42,000 steps. Yeah. So that was roughly 19 to 20 miles. Yeah. On top of using the metro. Yeah. So that’s pretty insane. So if you have any questions about Tokyo, leave it in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, click that subscribe button. Check out our other 24-hour videos. Click that bell notification. And we hope to see you in the next one. [Music]
We gave ourselves just 24 hours to see ALL of Tokyo… but did we actually pull it off? 🏃♂️⏳ From the historic charm of Asakusa and peaceful Ueno Park, to the grandeur of the Imperial Palace and the colorful chaos of Tokyo Station’s Character Street, we raced against the clock to check off every must-see spot.
Our journey takes us through the upscale streets of Ginza, up to the breathtaking views of Tokyo Tower, and into the electric energy of Shibuya Crossing and Shinjuku at night. 🚆🍜🗼 Along the way, we sampled mouthwatering food, uncovered hidden gems, and pushed ourselves to the limit to see if this crazy challenge was even possible.
Did we conquer Tokyo in a single day… or did time run out? Watch to find out!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Asakusa
02:42 Ueno Park
07:20 Imperial Palace
11:30 Tokyo Station / Character Street
13:42 Ginza
17:04 Tokyo Tower
18:46 Meiji Shrine
20:38 Shibuya
24:11 Shinjuku
#Tokyo24Hours #TravelChallenge #JapanVlog #ShibuyaCrossing #TokyoTower #Asakusa #UenoPark #Ginza #Shinjuku #TravelJapan #JapanTrip #TravelVlog #TokyoVlog #OneDayInTokyo
1 Comment
that is stunning picture- peace out!=)