You're getting Jack Kerouac style stream of consciousness prose for these two days, because I am dead tired and I have been up for over 24 hours now.
Mike and I leave O'Hare a little delayed at 6:05pm on Tuesday. The flight lasts 13 hours and 30 minutes, and we cross the international date line and arrive at 10:05pm in Tokyo on Wednesday. I do not fit in airplanes. Not at all. The flight was awful and I hardly slept a wink. We landed at Haneda, cleared customs, and jumped in a cab. People speak Japanese, the cars look different, the streets are busy, the exchange rate makes everything seem inexpensive.
Mike and I drop our bags at the hotel, and it's a little after 11pm local time. We drop our bags and walk around Akihabara, where we are staying. It's late, so the streets aren't as crazy, but it is still crazy. Maybe I should be ashamed to admit that my pop culture knowledge of Japan comes completely from video games and YouTube videos. But what I am seeing looks like video games and YouTube videos. A maze of itty-bitty little streets lead to the big streets. Mike and I walk up and down a big street and stop in at the 24 hour Don Quijote Akihabara. It is a pop culture explosion. We head to 7-Eleven, where I buy onigiri and some peach fanta drink. It is delicious and these are my first Japanese experiences. I will be more coherent tomorrow, when I am well rested and not smashed into an airplane seat. I am going to sleep.
This was our first full day in Tokyo. I had trouble sleeping through the night despite being very tired. The time difference between Chicago and Tokyo is fourteen hours, and I wasn't fully acclimated. So Mike and I were up early and ate a western style breakfast in Akihabara, near our hotel.
We then walked over to Ueno Park, not too far at all from where we ate breakfast. It was still early in the morning, and the streets were busy with people hurrying to work all around us. Ueno Park is a very large park in the middle of the city. It reminds me of Central Park in New York City or Grant Park in Chicago. We walked around for quite awhile, for sure. We visited Shinobazu Pond, which had a little temple near it, a Bhuddist Benten-do temple. Also of note were the beautiful Gojoten and Hanazono Inari shrines, and the larger Tosho-gu shrine. Nearby is Toeizan Kan'ei-ji Endon-in.
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| A huge whale in Ueno Park | Here I am next to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park |
A little tea house in Shinjuku Gyo-en National Garden |
Shinjuku Gyo-en National Garden | Mike and I outside of Meiji-Jingu Stadium |
After a much needed rest at the hotel (I still hadn't acclimated to the time change), Mike and I visited the beautiful Shinjuku Gyo-en National Garden. It's quite a large park, and quite calm in the middle of a busy city. There is a formal garden, a traditional Japanese garden, and lots of paths to walk. Very calm after the crowded train ride there.
A very short walk away is Meiji Jingu Stadium, built in 1936 and currently home of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, a baseball team in Nippon Professional Baseball. Mike and I were there to see the Swallows play the Chunichi Dragons. It was a ton of fun. I must say that there are designated cheering sections for both the home and visiting teams, which alternate cheering pretty much all the time that the game is being played. Audience participation is intense. They also have cheerleaders that go on the field between innings. The home team did lose 6-0, but it was a lot of fun.
Uh oh. This webpage is taking long to write, and I have a huge Japanese city to explore. Since I am so behind, I'm throwing in highlight bullet points for now, and I will fill in lots of details plus lots of pictures as soon as I get a chance. But I wanted to update this webpage so you didn't think I died, or something.
Last Updated Thursday June 5th 2025
ray@raymondfuller.com