(Tokyo, Japan). I had been planning this two-week trip for over 9 months and when it finally was time to depart, I was super excited! The last time I was in Japan was 9 years ago with my mom, but I knew this would be very different trip with my husband. As usual, the trip was planned around our meals. Our basic plan was to eat our way through Tokyo and then Kyoto. Instead of trying to do two big blogs on Tokyo and Kyoto, I will try to break it up day by day. For special meals and attractions, I will also do more specific reviews.
Day 1: Our nonstop flight was scheduled to depart around 4pm. We got there around 2pm since it was an international flight but we cleared check-in and luggage pretty quickly. Per our normal practice (or shall we call it tradition now?), we enjoyed a glass or two of wine at Vino Volo. (Tip - we learned that you can actually buy a bottle of wine at Vino Volo and carry it onto the plane. You have to finish the bottle on the plane before it lands but how hard is that on a 12 hour flight?)
I had found really cheap tickets on Singapore Airlines (approximately $920 roundtrip for a non-stop flight). The seats did seem a tad smaller than normal domestic carriers, but we survived. They also have different weight requirements so they made us check our carry-ons (boo). However, the service was quite lovely and the food was better than average. As usual, I couldn't sleep so I ended up watching a bunch of movies - Avengers, Age of Ultron and MockingJay Part I and Spy (which turned out to be a pleasant surprise).
Day 2: We arrived in Tokyo (Narita International Airport) at around 7:40pm. It was pretty fast to clear through immigration and customs and get luggage. However, it is quite a long journey into Tokyo from the airport. There are several choices for transportation (listed below), but we chose to take the Airport Limousine Bus because we wanted to be dropped off at our hotel.
Options for transportation from Narita into Tokyo:
- private car hire - takes about an hour depending on traffic / very expensive ($450 USD+)
- taxi - takes about an hour depending on traffic / also quite expensive ($150 USD+)
- NEX (Narita Express train) - takes about an hour and takes you to Tokyo Station or Shinagawa Station / (approx $30 USD); but then you have to take the metro or taxi to your hotel unless your hotel is right near the applicable station
- Airport Limousine Bus - takes about an hour and a half to 2 hours depending on your hotel / (approx $30 USD). It took us about 2 hours for them to take us to the Westin Tokyo in Ebisu.
We were exhausted by the time we arrived at the Westin Tokyo. I'll do a more thorough review but the staff was lovely and checked us in quickly and upgraded us to a larger room with a gorgeous city view. Our plan was to drop our luggage off, grab a casual dinner, take a shower and then go to sleep.
Using Google Maps we located the Coco Curry location in Ebisu (it's actually Curry House Coco Ichibanya) which was about a 12 minute walk from the hotel. I had watched so many youtube videos of people raving about the curry here that I had to go especially since my husband loves Japanese curry.
The staff at this Coco Curry didn't speak any English but luckily the menu did have some English translations. Essentially you can pick from the pictures on the type of curry you want (e.g., fried pork cutlet, fried chicken cutlet, vegetarian, plain, etc.), then you pick the amount of rice you want, the spiciness level and any sides.
I got a fried chicken cutlet, 200 grams of rice and a soft-boiled egg with my curry. For spice level, I chose "2" because I heard that it's actually quite spicy if you go "4" and above. My husband got a fried pork cutlet with some veggies. Both were delicious and they had quite a spicy kick even with a measly "2" spice level. Perfect with ice cold beers (even though I normally don't drink beers). Definitely worth checking out!
After dinner, I basically showered, changed into the Japanese robe that is available in most Japanese hotels and crashed with an ambien. We're finally here! Yay!
For Day 3 - We have tempura and bar eats on the menu! The post will be up next week.
In the meantime - Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving Weekend!
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