Arriving at the hotel

The taxi dropped us off at our hotel and we quickly hopped out and got started with the check-in. It was a surprisingly long process, checking in ourselves with a giant touch screen in the lobby. We were required to fill in many things, from home addresses to phone numbers (I understand the phone numbers, even though all ours were out of service because of the non-Japanese service provider, but home address? Why?). We made a small mistake and accidentally put both me and mum in the room that was in her name, and then my brother and my dad in the room that was in my name (why the second room wasn’t booked in dad’s name I don’t know tbh), but we figured it wouldn’t be an issue. The process went through with no problem, and we quickly got settled into our new rooms.

The hotel lobby had Christmas feeling too

The rooms were very small but had all the amenities you could possibly need. There was a giant queen size bed that took up about 3/4 of the room, a big TV, and a small bathroom with a toilet and a combination sink and shower. We also had an electric kettle, a fridge and both air conditioning and a humidifier! On the door was also two plastic bags with instructions on how to put them over your head of there was a fire. You’d never see anything like that back home! I understand the idea behind it, and I think it’s a good one. Getting oxygen and being able to see during a fire is vital for survival; it’s just so alien of a concept to me that it just feels wrong.

This is something I’ve always been taught not to do…

First dinner in Tokyo

the chef was very proud of his meat

After a quick look at our rooms, we decided to head out for dinner. We did not make it far however, as we found a Hibachi grill restaurant in the lobby of our hotel. There was an American family who were just getting seated when we got in, and we sat down at the bar together with them. The food was really good, we got A5 wagyu (except for mum who took a seafood course) and all manner of other Japanese items, all from fish and meat to veggies and miso!

As is normal for Hibachi there was a lot of showmanship involved, lots of fun talk and fire and other things. After I said something was “Umai”, one of the chefs told me (through a lot of hand gestures and limited English) that that was for young boys, and then he turned to mum and taught her to say “Oishii” instead, which she learnt almost immediately. Guess that’s what you could expect when you have been working in so many countries and learning so many languages!

As I wrote before there was more to the showmanship than just language, and for the main dish of our dinner, the wagyu, the chefs asked us to pick up our phones and film him whilst he set fire to the food. When the other chef did the same thing a little while later the first one mimed having a fire extinguisher and pretended to spray all over the fire until it died down. It was a really cool experience!

kitchen firefighters

o7 to you too gentlemen

When we had finished our meal we spent a little while talking with the two chefs. We taught them to say “tack så mycket” (thank you very much in Swedish), which they found very entertaining and thanked us a lot for. Dad somehow got them into a conversation about their families and found out that they were both 65! Dad told them how old he was and how many children he had, and they both saluted and bowed to him, calling him Senpai. It was certainly a great start to our trip, and I’m really happy we went to that restaurant specifically, it had great food and even greater service!

A quick midnight stroll

After dinner my brother, mum and I decided to take a stroll around the area. Our hotel is located in an area of Tokyo called Shinjuku, which is the red-light district of Tokyo, and at night that really showed. Neon lights and TV screens everywhere, as well as tons upon tons of adverts for host clubs. Thankfully we didn’t get bothered at all on our stroll which I was a bit worried about before we set out, but we did see a few touts even though we didn’t go through the main red-light street.

So why were we going out late at night after our long day of travelling? Why to scout the area of course! Mum wanted to get the lay of the land before our trip to Sibuya the day after, and I wanted to get myself a Suika card and some cash. We walked to Shinjuku station together, and found out that the JR-line (Japanese railway) helpdesk was closed for the day (very reasonably so as well, as it was already around 11 in the evening/night). We decided to go back later and started walking around to find an ATM instead. On our way out of the station we happened upon the big curved advert display at Shinjuku station that has a sort of 3-D effect to it. It was even more impressive in real life, so we had to stop for a while and take more pictures.

Coolest adverts I’ve seen yet!

Now, back to finding an ATM. Before the trip I had gotten myself a Revolut card to make it easier to pay in Yen, but I decided not to get a physical card since it cost extra, and it was now that I began realising my folly. Turns out ATM machines don’t like tapping to pay, which means I can’t pay with my phone. Nothing out of the ordinary at all, I just haven’t used an ATM in years. A bit dejected, we figured we’d go back to the hotel and continue our adventures the next day instead!

Back to the hotel

soooo, which one was ours again?

Now came the next big challenge. Finding our hotel. I first assumed I could just Google for the chain “Apa”, but as you can see on the map to the right that wasn’t very effective… Mum said she was pretty sure the name ended in “Kabukicho”, but that only brought it down to three options. Eventually we remembered it also had “Tower” in its name and we headed for the one with both. As we got there however, we didn’t recognise it at all! Turns out there were two places called “APA Hotel Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower” except our version also had the word Higashi thrown in at the beginning (after Hotel), and the one we weren’t staying at was in all capitals for some reason. How did we find this out you may ask then? Well, my little brother, in his genius, pulled out the “Find my iPhone” app, and simply located his airpod max which was still in the hotel room, and simply led us to the correct place via that.

Once we were home again I spent some time typing on the blog, and then I got to trying to get it online. Turns out I had made a mess of my whole install and it refused to run on my server, but in the end I managed to get all the technology to cooperate and publish this wonderful site!

Today’s Japanese phrases:

• Oishii (delicious)