My First Impressions of Tokyo, Japan as a Foreigner (what to expect)
Over the next week, I’m going to be exploring Japan for the very first time. I’ll be visiting multiple Japanese cities, trying to master the public transportation, uncovering ancient prehistoric sites and eating as much as I possibly can. Oh my gosh, so flavorful. Plus, I run into a few unexpected surprises. Our waitress chases out of the restaurant. You okay? If you’re new here, my name is Maddie and I make videos to show people what can happen when you get out and go within. By getting out of our comfort zone, we are catapulted within towards self exploration and transformation through physical challenges like running a marathon. I’m so happy or meditating in ice water, living out of my truck while driving across the entire country alone. There are bears out with cubs. I’m sharing the real raw journey of what happens when you trade certainty for curiosity. This week, I’m thousands of miles away from my comfort zone. And as someone who has done a fair amount of traveling, nothing could have prepared me for Tokyo. We made it to Tokyo. We’re in Shabuya. It is the hottest I’ve ever been. It’s pretty brutal. It’s really, but it’s okay. We We can’t check in until 3:00 p.m. It’s about 11 11:00 a.m. So, we dropped off our bags at our hotel. They locked them up for us and we are going to go explore and see what kind of trouble we can get into before we check into our hotel. Okay, a couple first impressions. Very clean. It’s unbelievably hot, but they’re all carrying little fans or umbrellas. Some of the most fashionable people I’ve ever seen in my life. Everyone’s just looks incredible. They’re so hip and fashionable. Pretty incredible. I’m very excited for these few days. I don’t even know what these are called, but they have cheese inside and I’ve seen them everywhere. I want to break it in half. Why? That’s why that was such a good shot. When I saw this, I did not expect it to be this good. It’s sweet, but it has cheese in it. Okay, so we’ve been in Tokyo for literally less than an hour, and I already love it more than I thought I would, which is amazing. We already tried a really cool snack and we see all these little ramen shops where you there’s a vending machine outside of it or inside of it and then you order what you want and then you get a ticket and then you go in and it looks like a bar kind of like a diner bar where there’s no tables. There’s just the bar and then you sit and eat it there. I’m so excited to try it. First time trying ramen in Tokyo. I’m literally beyond excited. I can’t even explain myself. I’m loving everything so far. Amazing. This is absolutely so huge. I didn’t even know they made bowls this big. But it’s first ramen. I got the egg and pork belly and then I added scallions. I’m just going to try the broth really quick. Oh my gosh, so flavorful. Oh, I’m excited. Okay, time to eat. What? I’m just so happy right now. Like everything I’ve heard about is in real life. One of my roommates is actually Hawaiian, but her family’s Japanese and she’s been to Japan a couple of times. And she me recommended this place called Mega Donkey, which is this huge store, and it just has a bunch of Asian and Japanese culture things for really cheap. [Music] What? It’s a Tamagotchi. Do I buy that? Yes. [Music] It’s a It’s fake. It’s a kitchen timer. A darn. Duped. There are so many different flavors of Kit Kats. Orange. There’s like a cracker version. You’d love the mine. I never knew this. Strawberry cheesecake flavored Kit Kat. If you’ve been following me for a long time, you know that pistachio is my favorite flavor of everything. And I just found a stand of yummy chocolate covered pistachio. So, I’m definitely getting it. I’m seeing a lot of cantaloupe flavored things, which is so unique. I never see that in the US. We’ve We haven’t even covered Look how much is left. We’ve covered probably 132nd of this store. And I already have a full cart because me and Brady are going to do a food test. My little brother Brady, he loves all things Japanese, Tokyo, this culture he’s really obsessed with and he’s only 11 years old. So, we are buy I am buying a ton of interesting, unique snacks he tank in the US and we’re going to do a food taste test together. So, this is what this is for. How much was the Pocky? This Pocky $118. I purchased a million. Okay, so we’re on the second floor and someone just told us, mind you, look how full my basket is. She can hardly carry that. I can barely carry it. Someone just told us there are seven floors. Seven? We got to do it. What are we going to do? Oh, this tells you the floor guide and what’s on each floor. Okay, we’re going to go to the floor guide. Well, I spent all of our We spent all of our time in the snacks. Oh, those are all the So, we’re going to level seven and then we’re going to work our way down. They have absolutely everything here. Literally, name something. Name anything. They have it. Glue, crafts, food, lotion, incense, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, slides, kimonos, souvenirs, postcards, tape. It’s like unbelievable. Toilet bowl cleaners. No, like you can’t actually name stuff because it it’s pointless. It’s everything. It’s here. These are the fans that everybody walks around with. It’s wicked cheap, isn’t it? If I get to a certain point, I will be purchasing one of those. I’ve almost forgotten how wretchedly hot it is out there because we’ve been in here for so long. It’s going to be a rude awakening. Okay, we were in that store for many hours. Many, many hours. Still didn’t see it all. I bought almost $100 worth of snacks to bring back to the US to try with Brady. And I can’t wait. Look at all this. Like, it’s like many pounds. Like, I’m going to get a workout. Oh. Oh. Oh my gosh. Cute. There’s sandals. I think this is where we sleep. Okay, we’re going into our first Japanese hotel room for the first time. And there’s slippers and a whip. Oh my gosh, cute. This is perfect for Oh, it feels amazing. Train tracks. It’s going to be fun through the night. I actually did see a review that their room was by train tracks, but it wasn’t that bad. I’m I love that. See, it’s going. You can’t even hear it. Literally like literally silent. How do they do that? That’s Japan for you. We’ve made it to our hotel. It’s so nice. Super nice. They gave us pajamas and slippers. We’ve already had basically what feels like a full day, but we have a lot more to do. So, we’re going to shower, get ready, and then go back out on the town. Okay, I’m showing you the pajamas that came with the hotel. How cute are these? They came with these little slippers. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but there’s an Onen Hot Springs spa in this hotel. I don’t think it get any better. Okay, so I bought almost $100 US dollars worth of snacks, but apparently we bought them tax-free or something like that. So, we’re not allowed to open any of them until we get back to the US, which is a little bit confusing. I’m not totally sure how that works. I’m going to do some research, but they sealed them in a plastic bag, and I literally can’t open them. They I gave them my credit card and my passport. They like wrote some stuff down, and they said, “Don’t open them until we get there.” But I just don’t understand how they would know if we did or didn’t. I It’s just really confusing to me. I’m going to do some research, but what? I’m trying the day. You are? Oh my god. Are you okay? I don’t know. Okay, so I’m going to give you a little tour. You walk in from this door and then we have um a little storage area. We can hang some things. We have a fridge, a cabinet. Okay. Oh, a lot of buttons as always in a Japanese bathroom. And then we have this whole area, a couch, a table. We’ve already made a mess of the place. That’s okay. Oh, and there’s AC, which is everything. [Music] We are in Shabuya, and it’s night and it’s cold and there are so many people, and I love it. It’s such an energetic feeling. It’s no wonder people stay up all night here. Totally. It’s like the the city came alive like once the sun went down. We are at Crossing and it is insane. There are so many cool. It’s really cool. So much cooler at night. Okay, this is crazy. We’re in this place where we’re cooking our own meat in this broth it looks like. And there’s a whole bunch of different appetizers. There’s like spicy pickles. They just kept bringing us more and more food. They brought us three plates of Wagu beef, insane amount of vegetables, and they just dumped it all in the broth. And then they brought us yummy and yummy appetizer. And they just brought us noodles, rice, and an egg. This is such a cool experience. I love it. So yummy. So if you haven’t heard about Japanese toilets, literally when you walk in the door, the toilet seat has a sensor so it opens and so you don’t have to touch it. There are options for sounds, beds, so many different types of buttons, seat warmers. seat is warm when you sit on it. I just had to wave my hand and it flushed. This is the craziest place I’ve ever seen. We stumbled upon upon the craziest like little bar ever. The outside is literally a church and they’re all dressed as nuns. There’s an altar in the back and there’s a DJ and they’re bumping the craziest music. It’s like the craziest place I’ve ever been. In the back there’s a spiral staircase. I want to go to there. So, we had to pop our heads in to check it out. Where’s your cross necklace? We literally were trying to go to Starbucks and we just got ushered into this Hello Kitty popup. Not mad about it. On that note, we’re going to Starbucks. We made it back to our hotel after being in Shabuya all day. It was an absolutely incredible day. Unbelievably fun and exciting. Honestly, I think we’ve saved one of the best things for last, though. Our hotel has an onen, so we are gonna end the long day of tons of walking in the onen. We’re going to get healed so we can do it all again tomorrow. Okay, so we just got back from the onen and it was first of all amazing, great, but shocking at first just because I didn’t expect it to be so nude. Like it’s so nude. So nude. Like the minute we walked in, there was like three different people just completely nude walking around, which isn’t weird, but in America, nobody does that. Yeah. Yeah. I just was not used to it. And we were planning on being able to do the onen like in our swimming suits, but that is not how it goes. There’s a whole bunch of rules. It’s pretty strict. You go in there, you’re not allowed to wear any clothes. You can go into a sauna. There’s little shower stations. It’s all very peaceful. And then there’s a cold plunge. And then there’s like a square bath. It looks kind of I guess like a hot tub, but it’s shallow, right? It was just really hard to navigate and like I didn’t know I didn’t want to be naked in front of people. I didn’t It was weird at first, but just realizing that everyone is doing it and it’s not it’s not weird. It’s normal. And so you just do it and then and tomorrow we’re going to try again and like do it better, like more calmly. Yeah. We were so scattered and freaked out at the beginning where we were we were literally standing there in our towels just like what what do we do? Yeah, that was wild. Overall, great experience and I’m very happy we did it. Yeah, it’s very cultural, so it’s important, you know. Okay, definitely time for bed cuz we have a big day. We’re both like Yeah. Okay. Good night. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]
I am traveling Tokyo, Japan! These are my first 24 hours as a first time tourist to Tokyo. I’m trying Japanese food for the first time, enjoy this Japan Travel Vlog!
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