Oh, Kansai…it’s been so much fun being here again, but it’s time to move on! I got up and finished packing then headed to the train station to catch the bullet train back to Tokyo. It was a little sad having to leave, but I had to smile when a rainbow appeared over by the mountains in the distance. I love you too, Kansai!
The trip to Tokyo was uneventful, and getting through Tokyo Station wasn’t bad. I got to my hotel early, but fortunately my room was already cleaned so I got to check in early. After checking the room, settling in, and taking a quick shower I got on the subway to TeamLab Planets.
I had such a great time at TeamLab Borderless a few weeks ago I decided I needed to visit their sister site. Planets is much smaller than Borderless, and there are actually directions to walk in. The first room was a bit of an exercise because it was basically a room of gigantic bean bag chair type things that you have to crawl and roll over. Then you have to roll up your pant legs because the next exhibit is a knee-high pond and they project flowers and koi all over the surface. The koi actually move depending on how the guests move and what we’re doing using motion sensors and detecting where the light breaks off, so it was really neat. There was also a replica of my favorite room at Borderless, the LED strand room, as well as the most vertigo inducing ceiling and wall projection room where you have to lay down to look up. Planets is much smaller than Borderless, it only took about an hour to go through, but it was still cool! If you had to only pick one though then definitely go to Borderless. Afterwards, I stopped at a curry place to get some dinner, then went back to the hotel to plot out my last few days here in Japan. Tomorrow I’m (hopefully) getting up EARLY to hit the fish market, but we’ll see!
To be honest, what makes me love Japan isn’t necessarily the endless ancient buildings or sightseeing opportunities or shopping or other touristy stuff…it’s the language, the culture, the people, and the little comforts and quirks and complete unexpected randomness. For example, I love that you can order from a machine, and you push a button when you need something instead of having a waitress. I love that everyone lines up and takes turns, I love the deep soaking tubs, the weighted blankets, the funny TV shows even if I don’t understand it all. How people respect and care about each other but also don’t give a fuck and come up with the craziest, wildest stuff. That’s what I enjoy about being here. So when I woke up this morning at 6am to my alarm going off I couldn’t be bothered to move from the cocoon I had made myself with this glorious cooling weighted blanket that’s standard here. I pretty much dozed in fluffy comfort (but with a firm pillow and mattress underneath because orthopaedics is a priority too) and watched NHK for 3 hours, just enjoying being here and not running around. FYI, the music for the weather forecast section of the news literally has not changed in 15 years. Plus, funny enough, they were doing a segment about Hikone Castle and how it was built and its history and stuff, so I took it as a sign to stay in and watch. Finally my stomach decided it was time to get up, so I got dressed and headed to the Starbucks at Shibuya crossing and had a mocha while watching the insanity down below for a while. Then I hopped on the train to TeamLab Borderless.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Tokyo already and seen most of the big tourist sights, but there have been some new additions in the last 15 years that piqued my interest so I specifically came to see those. TeamLab Borderless is a fully immersive art exhibit using light, sound/music, mirrors, temperature, smells, and touch to really get people into their exhibits and see how beautiful they are. They don’t give you a map, and the entire area is in darkness with juuuust enough light along the floors to not trip over your own feet, the idea is you go in and explore. There are rooms with strands of LED lights and mirrors floor to ceiling that make it look like it’s raining, a lantern room where I almost smacked into a mirror because you get so distracted, a balloon room, smoke light room, glass projection room, flower garden room, a digital waterfall, so so many rooms I’m still not sure I got them all even though I was there for over 2 hours. Still, I think I did except for the birds nest which had over an hour wait, so I headed out and waved quickly to the Rainbow Bridge and took the train back to Shibuya.
After getting some ramen, I strolled through part of Yoyogi Park and headed to Meiji Jingu since Google said it was open until 6pm, but when I got there at 4pm they were just closing the gates. Guess it’s sun up to sun down this time of year. No biggie, I walked a little further and went to Takeshita Street in Harajuku. It’s not Sunday so I only saw a small handful of the “Harajuku girls” but I did find the Totti Candy Factory and got one of those ridiculously gigantic cotton candy cones. Thing was 3x bigger than my head. People that know me know I can handle a lot of sugar, but even I couldn’t eat all of that. I also found a place selling nice chopsticks and had him engrave my katakana name onto them.
I passed on the exotic animal cafés, I’ve heard horror stories about them and keeping the exotic animals in poor condition…but I did come across a pet pig café. I figured pigs are domestic, so it was probably okay, plus I had never pet a pet pig before. There was only a 10 minute wait so I stuck around until I could go in. They had 6 or 7 pigs running around and they were adorable. They mostly came to me for ear scritches but there were four that had found their way into the laps of people with black pants (ALL black pants, they didn’t seem to care about anyone else with any other colors on, just FYI if you go!) They were cute, and seemed happy enough. I’d still eat them if they were made into bacon though.
Afterwards, I wandered back to the hotel to take advantage of another of those little comforts I mentioned earlier, the famous Japanese deep soaking tub! After being in Europe and Thailand where they favor showers over tubs 95% of the time to the point where they don’t even have tubs, getting into that deep soaking tub was like heaven. I relaxed and searched stuff for my next destinations until I started to get pruney. Now I’m going to try to go to sleep early so I can wake up super early tomorrow!
