Tokyo is one of those cities which captures my imagination. It’s fast moving, ever changing, amazing pop culture and the food’s fantastic! My Tokyo trip earlier this year was a blast. It was the 2nd time in a year that I was there and no regrets. This begins the series of posts over the next month of my trip, where I’ll share pics and some recommendations.

One thing I love about Tokyo city, are the lights at night. It really brings a certain vibrancy to Tokyo. Shinjuku is a great place to start.

But of course, one of the most famous spots in Tokyo is the Shibuya crossing. The location itself is a hive of activity. It’s fantastic to just soak in the atmosphere just by crossing the street!

And of course when you’re walking along the streets of Tokyo, you’re bound to come across something unusual. Like this party bus in the pics below. Or even their police vehicles! Reminds me of a certain Transformer, Prowl, whose vehicle mode was a Jap police car. heh

Getting around Tokyo is piss easy. If you thought our Singapore public transport system was good, well you gotta visit Japan. Tokyo’s train lines connects you to nearly everywhere and their trains come every 2 – 3 mins. From their JR lines to their Metro lines, it’s so well connected! And there are English names and directions which make it super easy to navigate. Though don’t travel during peak hours, or you’ll get squashed like sardines!

My trip this year fell just after New Years and I managed to catch the beautiful Shinjuku lights. Was like being in a ferry tale.

There’s so much more to share. And I hope my posts go a long way to helping entice you to plan your own trip to Tokyo. So watch this space in the next few weeks for more!

Out last full day in Tokyo. We had covered all the areas we wanted to visit, so today we decided to go back to Harajuku and Shibuya.

One of our first stops was this cafe which serves the nicest egg and cheese on toast! There’s just the right amount of mayo to sweeten things up! As you walk down the main street, Takeshita-dori, from the station, it’s the first cafe on the left!

I also decided to have my last crape for the trip. And while waiting in the queue, I noticed the cherry blossom tree which was in full bloom. Beautiful.

After that, it was on with the crape! yummy and delicious. The cream they used was one of a kind.

It’s always fun walking along Takeshita-dori street. There’s heaps to see and the shop fronts are always very different.

Sometimes you may even bump into hot Japanese school girls!

After walking along Takeshita-dori street, we decided to check out some of the other back streets. Most of which are quant areas with heaps of smaller shops. The street shown above is Cat Street if I’m correct. I recommend checking it out as there are quite a few shops selling unusual stuff, as well as some unique looking buildings.

One of the buildings that popped out of no where was this Nike Shop. They were having a sale, and as usual, the locals love to wait for good things.

There was even a toy shop which sold some vintage and hard-to-find toys.

Back on the main road, Meji-Dori, you may come across the Audi Forum building or even this shop front which reminded me of the scrolling text in some of New York’s Times Square light boards.

Harajuku is packed to the max on weekends as you can see on the street side as well as outside the train station.

We checked out the nearby Yoyogi park were there were heaps of festivities. Apparently the locals love to spend their weekends in the park and they stream into the park in hordes. They lay out mats and congregate in groups eating and drinking away! Some practise their dancing while some practise their juggling skills.

The entrance to the park is lined with food stores selling all types of Japanese street food. Like the yakitoris above. Yummmm.

And of course no trip to Yoyogi Park would be complete without cosplayers. Though for some reason we saw hardly any. I took pics of those we did see though. Love those Elvis impersonators.

We had a great day out and was kinda sad to have the night ending on us. For our last meal we felt like tempura. We walked all around Shinjuku looking for a good place to eat, but couldn’t find any place that specialised in tempura. It was only when we decided to check out 1 last obscure corner did we finally find the place. It was the same chain of restaurants that we had the best tempura a few days back. Yeepeee!

Shinjuku was a great place to stay and as a base of operations, it was very well connected.

Our hotel, Sunroute Plaza Hotel Shinjuku, was also very comfortable and reasonable in costs. The location was great as it was about 5 mins away from Shinjuku Station.

Narita Airport in the morning, waiting for our flight back. Dreading going back to Singapore.

Checked out the food court at the airport and they had this pretty cool technology. For every order, they pass you this small device. You can walk around or go back to your seat, when your food is ready, the device will beep and vibrate signalling for you to pick up your dishes. Good idea!

The huge A380 waiting for us on the tarmac.

The view from the top is truly one to savour. Can anything be as blue?

The new inflight entertainment system on SIA planes rocks. Over 100 movies, tv programmes and games to keep one occupied. The screen is now bigger and even has a small light below for your reading purposes. You can even connect your iPod or USB drive to read video, mp3s and documents!

And that’s it! Our last pic of our Tokyo trip. It was a fantastic trip and we had great fun. 9 days exploring Tokyo and eating Tokyo. Heh,, we wanna go back!

Along Omotesando-dori lies Kiddy Land. A building full of various toys for all ages. With the top floor holding mainly action figures, 12 inch figures and other stuff.

Jan 2010 UPDATE: Updates in Blue. Check the pics out below!

The shelfs in Kiddy Land are kept pretty up to date. You’ll find current stuff here.

Along Cat Street is a small shop called AstroMike. Selling some vintage 80s & 90s toys as well as current toys. Pretty good to find some rare and old stuff.

View Tokyo Toy Haunts in a larger map

Nearby Harajuku is Shibuya and Mandarake can be found there. Refer to the map below. From the pic of the entrance above, the stairs lead down to B2 where you will find the shop. It’s a pretty huge underground space with lots of anime dvds, manga and toys. Though the toy selection may not be as big as other places, I have found some hard-to-find stuff there in my past two trips. Good for Transformers, Macross, Gundam, small range of 12 inch figures and Otaku stuff.

I’ve added some pics of how it looks down there. Pretty cool underground toy shop.

View Tokyo Toy Haunts in a larger map

The day started at Harajuku with me and Jas braving the mass of people. From Harajuku we walked to Shibuya. It was a long day of shopping and eating. heh.

First up was the crape in Harajuku, I previously tried this 2 years ago and it was lovely then. So I had to grab another one when I saw the stall was still around. Strawberry crape. Nice…. The whipped cream is deadly! So so rich.

The thing about Japan is that there are so many weird and wonderful things to see. I came across this shop which had the cutest matches,,,, with faces!! Would you even want to light one and burn them up? lol

No trip to Shibuya would be incomplete without two pictures, one of the famous Shibuya Crossing, the largest and busiest pedestrian crossing in the world.

And the other pic would be a pic of Shibuya from the crossing at night.

After a tiring day, the best ending would be great food. Jas and I walked around the streets of Shinjuku and saw a Yakiniku restaurant that looked good the night before. So tonight we went there. From the pic you’ll see it’s a smokey place. It’s in one of the back streets that it’s almost impossible for me to give you accurate directions to the place.

The food was simply excellent! I love eating Yakiniku back home in Singapore, Robertson Quay and Holland Village both have good places. But this little place in Shinjuku was awesome! The food was good quality and cheap! And the atmosphere was second to none! Small, smoky and full of Japs! We’re definitely going back there before the trip is over.