TRAVELOG

I watched Wicked and The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) on the flight. We landed at around 3pm JST and the customs/immigration line was so long.

for our first four nights, we stayed in a tiny apartment in koenji. the walk to the nearest station was pretty far, but the area was nice. after quickly dropping our things off at the apartment, we met up with a friend for dinner. then, we went to bed early and slept for something like 12 hours, super tired from traveling.

we headed to sunshine city right away, getting there just as it opened. It was definitely a good idea, seeing how busy it got only a few hours later. there was some kind of cosplay event going on, and throughout the day, we saw so many girls walking around dressed as various anime men. this was our first introduction to the massive popularity of nintama rantarō. There were so many groups of ninja walking around...

at sunshine city, we started by checking out the mugiwara store and bought a bunch of one piece merch as well as getting some snacks from the pokemon sweets cafe. then, we checked out the bandai namco cross store. We bought some one piece tcg packs and I pulled the best card I'd pull the entire trip- parallel art honesty impact. at this point, the mall was already pretty crowded, but I waited in line anyway at the pokemon ceter to grab the Fit plush of my favorite pokemon, tangrowth.

we left sunshine city and headed to the nearby amiami store to visit the yugioh popup shop that i wanted to go to.

at night, we went to a yakult swallows vs yomiuri giants baseball game. the swallows won 1-0. we were lucky to see a homerun by the swallows- when they get a home run, the majority of the audience pull out small umbrellas and twirl them, which looks really cool.

we had breakfast at komeda coffee and headed just a few train stops away to kichijoji.

we went to inokashira park, which we were excited to revisit since we've only been there in winter. the greenery was beautiful in contrast with benzaiten shrine. then, we went down the sun road shopping street. the book-off there has some good deals. we checked out an arcade too, and they had the new blue-eyes white dragon and red-eyes black dragon plush i was hoping to find. i managed to win them both, then we went to coco's curry for dinner.

at night, we went to shibuya to visit the mugiwara store there and get some dinner. the mugiwara store here had a signed shikishi by the author himself, oda. it was so cool to see an original drawing of his.

after that, we finally pulled char from a gachapon machine after many tries. we checked out tower records, which was super cool. i enjoyed the vkei section but just ended up getting a buck-tick cd as a psuedo-souvenir of the concert i had coming up. the nighttime vibes of shibuya are chaotic but fun.

we spent the day in harajuku, tactically avoiding takeshita dori because it sucks. instead, we started by walking through anthony's favorite shrine in tokyo, meiji jingu. we walked down a random street and saw something we didn't even know existed: the chiikawa bakery. to our surprise, advance reservations weren't needed, so we got on the waitlist and shopped around in the meantime. i finally found a store selling some of the chiikawa x mlb merch from the tokyo series. we checked out the harajuku mugiwara store, which imo is the best one out of the ones we visited. the cute theme was really well done and they had a lot of exlusive merch there, i regret not getting more T_T

once it was our time, we went back to the chiikawa bakery and had a delightful experience picking our chiikawa-themed baked goods and enjoying the cute decorations. they were running that place like the navy, it was so streamlined lol.

at night, we went to nakano broadway, which we'd never been to before. it's known as a goldmine for cheap anime goods and some people prefer it to akihabara. tbh, i found it to be just as touristy if not more somehow. the prices at most stores weren't great either. the store pictured was my favorite though- it was filled to the brim with primarily shoujo and cute character goods, and i did pick up some nice trinkets there. overall, i think nakano broadway is sadly not really worth revisiting for me due to the hiked-up prices that contradict the kind of sleazy, run-down otaku haven vibe that it embodies. i did find a chiikawa pop socket here though which was pretty clutch considering my old pop socket randomly exploded on the train yesterday.

we got up bright and early to go to shinjuku station and catch a highway bus to fujikawaguchiko. we got there with time to spare and relaxed outside the station for a bit. it's wild how the busiest train station in the world can have such a quiet and peaceful area to relax right outside it. we enjoyed the scenic bus ride with some snacks and arrived at the town. we were staying overnight to give ourselves two chances to see mt fuji on a clear day. lucky for us, both days were pretty clear and we had a great view of the mountain. i have to say, fujikawaguchiko has got to be the most tourist-heavy place i have ever been to in japan. it was kind of insane. thankfully, when we left the station area it thinned out a lot and wasn't too bad.

we dropped off our things at our hotel and took another bus to the location of the shibazakura festival, which we were there for nearly the peak of. the fields of pink moss blossoms were so pretty and my pics do NOT do it justice at all. it's the most beautiful place i've been in my life by far. we got some snacks at the festival and enjoyed the scenery. i got a sunburn from being at such a high elevation though, oops. we headed back to the town after a few hours and just walked around, enjoying the different perspectives of mt fuji.