Japan 2025, July 21

The hotel check-in times have been at 2pm instead of 3pm which is good. Combined with a check-out at either 11am or 12pm it allows the right amount of time to travel from one hotel to the next. Since I researched all of the steps for Tokyo, I just had to navigate my way out of the Tokyo shinkansen station and on to a local train line nearby, then a short walk to the hotel.

After another basic breakfast I went for a final run up to Nagoya Castle. I included a lap of the parkrun course as well, but forgot to turn off and ended up doing two laps, for a total of 10 kilometres. Returning to pack up only took another ten minutes so I had lots of time to spare. My suitcase feels like it keeps getting heavier, although I have hardly purchased anything, and only very small lightweight items.

I left the hotel at about 10:30am in order to have a bit of spare time to get the shinkansen in case any problems came up. Thanks to yesterday it was an easy trip and I was through to the platforms by about 10:45am. As I was running low on supply I picked up some Japanese brand sunscreen to try.

The train showed up on time at 11:20am and reached the main Tokyo station around 1:00pm, it went a bit slower once it got close to the city. Straight off the train I found the station exit sign I was looking for and made it from the street to the next subway station with no trouble. The subway train was not too crowded, so I didn't have any problems taking up all the space with a suitcase and backpack.

Getting off the train one stop before Asakusa I also managed to head in the right direction and made it to the hotel well before 2pm. Before even getting to the main part of Asakusa I was amazed by how many tourists there were on the main street. I'd hardly seen any foreigners for the first week and now it seemed like every second person was a visitor, so not an ideal start for Tokyo. I'm a bit more worried what places like Shibuya and Shinjuku are going to look like compared to this.

I dropped off my suitcase before check-in and went for a quick half hour walk around the area. With the sun out and not much shade it was incredibly hot, it has been 35 degrees every day according to Google weather. I came to the main entrance of Senso-ji temple, which was quite crowded, so only took a couple of photos and then headed back to the hotel.

One of the staff showed me to an automated check-in machine, but then waited around to help anyway. It took two attempts to scan my passport, but that may have been a machine fault as the staff had to do the standard "previous screen, next screen" trick to retry.

Surprisingly the room wasn't as small as I expected it to be, with enough room to spread out my luggage and still move around easily. My window was facing the opposite direction of Tokyo Skytree, and I was only on the 8th floor, so it probably would have been blocked by other buildings anyway. Some floors have two laundry machines, and the TV displays the current progress of each of them so you don't have to keep going around to check. The TV also had a section to choose your room cleaning option for the next day.

It was already 3pm and I didn't have much planned for the day, originally I had just intended to stay nearby around Asakusa. Having a bit more time than expected I had a look at Google maps and my itinerary of nearby locations. There was a train line very close by that I'd passed which is only two stops from Akihabara so I went there for a quick visit instead.

Getting out of the station it still felt very similar to what I remember from 15 years ago. Along the main street was several tall narrow buildings completely fitted out by one tenant, selling a different category of products on each floor. Meanwhile lots of the smaller places around had anime, capsule toys, and skill tester games. I didn't see many selling video games or related merchandise, particularly retro items. And finally just off the main street was a lot of very bored maids trying to advertise their maid cafes to people walking past.

I only went in to a couple of store near the main streets, and stayed on the street level since I didn't want to spend hours navigating floors and escalators yet. Soon after I was back on the same train line to Asakusa, getting some bakery and drinks along the way. It was a relief to find out it wasn't nearly as hot after 5pm as I was heading back towards the hotel. Overall this was a pretty quiet day compared to the rest, but every other day I expect to be busy.

Public transport = 598 yen

Steps = 17,845 with 10 kilometres running