Osaka Tokyo Adventure Day 2: Harajuku and Yomiuri Land

Hellooooo Tokyo!  Ok, I know I'm still catching up on posts, but at least I'm posting!  Ok so to catch you up... Monday was our first full day in Tokyo.  Our hotel is near Ueno park, so we decided to start the day with some exercise so that we can eat whatever we want on this trip.  Here's what greeted us when we entered the park...  I don't remember seeing that whale the last time.  I guess its been awhile since I've been to Ueno.

On our walk we found Pusheen's cousin... I thought feral cats weren't fat?

After our walk, we headed back to the hotel for some FREE BREAKFAST!!!  Yay!  Oh how I've missed Toyoko Inn's free breakfasts.  The last two trips were at Air B&B's so we were on our own.  It's not fancy, but its oishi!!

We didn't have a set game plan for the day, so we made a few changes and headed to Harajuku after breakfast.  Went to our favorite stores:  Kiddyland, Oriental Bazaar, and the Line store...

Only left Kiddyland with a few items.  I'm so proud of myself for not going overboard!  I still like to look, but controlling myself more with all the cuteness.  After all, our suitcase space is very limited.

After Oriental Bazaar, we decided to explore the backstreets of Omotesando and stumbled on a pancake place!!!  This was one of my must do items for this trip!!  This place is downstairs, so you need to look for the signs.  I think it was called Happy Pancake on Google Maps.

Here's what it looks like when its cooking. They put a lid on it in between taking the temperature.  So fluffy!!

Here's the menu.  We just shared the regular one with honey and butter.

OMG I couldn't wait to eat it!!!!

It was soooooooo good! I recommend checking it out. I think I need to have more pancakes before I leave.

After our pancakes, we headed for the Line store.  Normally I don't get anything there, but my kpop loving daughter likes these characters created by BTS.

I don't know why this bear looks so small in this photo.  He was huge!

I really don't like this heart guy (and I love hearts!).  I think its his lips that lose me...

 This guy in my favorite...  He's a cute doggy!

I also like the cookie looking guy...

 After leaving the Line store, we headed up Takeshita Dori.  I was ready for more treats!!  Disclaimer:  There's no possible way I could've eaten all of the goodies they sell there.  I think I would go into sugar shock if I did, but I will give you a review of each item we tried so you can decide if its right for you.

If you are entering Takeshita-dori from the far entrance (not the one across from the station), as we did, most of these places are located on your left.  We actually passed the gelato place where they make your ice cream cone look like cute animals, but passed on that since I was hoping we'd eat some ice cream at another location.  We also passed by the ice cream that doesn't melt.  That didn't sound right to me and I didn't want to waste my stomach space on items that are not worth my calories!

But our next treat is one of my favorites!!  Zaku Zaku!  I'm pretty sure I wrote about this pastry before. Its so yummy!  Its crunchy on the outside and filled with a custard cream.  They also have a soft serve that looks good but as I said earlier, I wanted to save room....

Right next door to the zaku zaku place is the Long, Longer, Longest store with all types of long items such as soft serve, spiral potatoes, and other goodies.  We didn't even check it out.  Sorry. Maybe when the girls are with us.  We needed to stay focused...  Next up was Calibee!!

I remember this from our last trip... It was still so good!  The french fry looking things are covered in parmesan cheese and taste like french fries,  If you buy them in the store they are hard like chips.  The chips on the left are covered in Hokkaido butter.  Please note:  if anything is labeled with Hokkaido- there's a reason for it.  They have some kind of secret source for food production and anything with that label seems to deliver.  Back to the chips...  It was so good. I wanted to lick the container.  I settled for getting the last bits with my last french fry.  Heaven...

After Calibee, we headed to Daiso for some shopping and got some goodies there.  When we headed back down Takeshita-dori, Paul said he wanted to try a crepe, so I recommended Com Crepe as there are several YouTubers who say their creme brulee crepe is good.  He ordered that and liked it a lot. Me?  I can pass. I think I'm tired of crepes for now.

After we finished that snack, we were trying to figure out if there was anything else we wanted to go to in that area.  We had seen two more places that were a little farther away and decided to go for it... and glad we did!  This next one was soooooooo worth it!  Its called Milk- Hokkaido soft serve!!

We decided to try the parfait with pudding on the bottom with tapioca.  It was yummy but I think I'd just be happy with the plain cone!

It was the creamiest soft serve I've ever eaten.  You need to try this if you are in Japan.  I need another one!

The other place that we wanted to check out was nearby Milk.  I heard about a Harajuku Pear that can be found at Anywhere Door.   They also have Harajuku Apple and Peach to choose from and other desserts.  We ordered the pear to try and it was not at all what I expected.  It actually had pears on the inside surrounded by what seemed to be frozen whipped cream?  It was OK.  I wouldn't make a special trip to find it though... Go get another soft serve from Milk instead.

While wandering the backstreets of Omotesando, we saw this guy in all different poses.  This one was the funniest.  Paul did a pretty good impression!

After we made it to Shinjuku station, we decided to eat.  I think we wanted some real food after eating all the junk food that day.  We settled on ramen at the station.

After we finished, we headed to Yomiuri Land!!!  When you get off the station, you can either catch the gondola or the bus.  We opted for the Gondola!

That was the right choice!  Here's our view from the gondola...

So prior to our trip, I saw an article about winter illumination. I've always wanted to go see the lights, so when I saw the article, I checked the dates to see if any were when we were going to be there.  Yay!!!  It just started up at Yomiuri Land, which is a theme park, so I asked Paul if we could go there. They are open during the day too, and have a lot of amusement rides, but we only wanted to go to see the lights... so we got the night pass that was good from 4:30pm and about $14 each.  This was only the entry fee and did not include any rides.

This was the fountain show that is similar to the Bellagio fountains in Vegas.  I think Bellagio needs to step it up though.  Their show was quite impressive!  I posted a video on my facebook page and instagram, so if you follow me there, you'll be able to watch it.

This area was Paul's favorite due to the colors of the trees.  So pretty!

This was a light tunnel that was a show in itself!  I also posted a video on my facebook/instagram if you want to see.

This was Emerald Mountain (for obvious reasons) but if you look closely in front of it, people were sliding down a slide in an inner tube.

We had a lot of fun there.  So glad we were able to fit this in!

This guy is their mascot.  Don't ask me what his name is.  Sorry!

After a looooooooong day, we headed back to our room for some sleep.  Hopefully I can catch up on more posts soon. I'm on the shinkansen back to Osaka right now, so hopefully I can work on more.  Till then- sayoonara!

2018 Tokyo/Osaka Trip!! Day 1: Travel Day

Ok I'm junk... I just saw my last post and realized that I never did finish my last Osaka trip... nor did I blog about my last Vegas trip!  I will see if I can put together a summary post about that one, but that will need to come later.  For now, I'm already behind in posting about our current trip!  So I'm going to do my darnest to catch up now.

So to give you some background... we had no intention of going to Japan this year.  My daughter is in high school now, and it hit us like a brick wall that we need to seriously start saving for college.  So we tried really hard, but the deal was just too good to pass up.  We found a really cheap flight on Scoot Airlines and booked it without much thought.

The trip came really fast since I'm super busy at work and at home.  Not only am I doing 2 jobs right now, I'm also preparing for 2 craft fairs.  Not so bright yah?  But I was determined to not let any of that spoil my trip... so somehow I made it!

Thanks to Grandma Helen for flying over and taking care of Akemi and Kiko! 

Our trip started pretty early.  We took the first flight out to Oahu, which leaves Hilo at 6:30.  I was already tired just from that, but had to survive the layover until we could board for Kansai.  We were a little worried since our last connecting flight to the Air Asia trip didn't give us much time to get our luggage, check in, and board, so we added in some cushion just in case.

I must say... Scoot's check in was much smoother and faster than Air Asia.  No problems whatsoever!!  So we had a lot of time before our flight and ended up getting a bite to eat at the food court before heading over to the gate.

Can you tell I was tired waiting for the flight?

Finally on the plane!  Can't wait to take a nappy nap.

Someone kept taking pictures of me, but I caught someone also sleeping!

Overall, Scoot was pretty good!  There was a lot of legroom and we were lucky that no one sat by us.  We paid a little extra for the quiet section, so it was right behind business class,  The seats were grouped in threes, so it was actually better to sit in the middle section.  The only thing junk was that our restroom didn't seem to work, so if you needed to go, you needed to go to the back of the plane.  I'd definitely go on Scoot again!!

So after we got through immigration and customs, we picked up our pocket wifi and then looked for the takkubin to deliver our bags to the Tokyo hotel.  I highly recommend doing that if you are catching the train and need to take your luggage.  Paul reserved it online before we left, so it was pretty easy.  Our luggage would get to our hotel the next day,  Yay!  That was so much easier once we were on the shinkansen!  Totally doing that again!

We had a hard time finding the office to get our rail passes.  It was located at the central gate in Shin-Osaka station in case I need to find it again,  LOL!  We finally made it on our train and I totally crashed out!

Three hours later we arrived at Tokyo Station and then transferred to the Yamanote line to get to our hotel. This time we booked at a Toyoko Inn in Ueno.. This is a nice location!  Not to far from the park so we go walking every morning, 

After we settled in, we went to look for some food. I was tired and didn't want to go too far, so we found a Family Mart and got some combini food for dinner. Here's what we got...

So happy to have combini musubi's again!  Nothing like being in Japan!  Ok gonna work on yesterday's post next...