Japan Trip 2026: Tokyo Coming & Going
March 28th, 2026
I’ve been back from Japan for little over a week. It is a testament to jet lag and how busy we are at work that I’m just getting around to typing the first of a series of blog posts on my triumphant return to Japan after a decade.
If you did not read the planning post you may want to. Planning was not as extensive as for my trip to Scotland but you may notice a similar pattern where I join a larger group for part of my trip. I’d previously visited Tokyo in the 90s, a picture of that trip I dug up from old photo albums, because in the 1990s people did not have digital cameras. However in the early 2000s, when I lived in Japan, I did have a Nikon CoolPix 2500 so I have some digital photos from that time. However in 2004, there was barely any blogosphere. There was however Muschamp.ca so I do have old stories, proto-blog posts if you will which I can reference or steal images from.
In 2016, I did visit Japan. However, I just passed through Tokyo Airport, probably Narita, and although I did enjoy some Ramen, my ultimate destination was Hokkaido which I’ve now visited twice. Suffice to say I’ve have traveled to Japan multiple times over multiple decades and maybe I have some insight. Or perhaps I’m just exhausted as I still have not heard the results of the last certification course I did, but was encouraged enough to take yet another one by the experience.
Joining A Group Tour
The majority of my time in Japan this time was spent with Charles from Rascal + Thorn. He has an Instagram and I’ll try embed some of his posts as he made one most days we travelled, though some of them may have been those that expire after 24 hours. I followed him and he recognized me at the hotel restaurant the morning after I arrived in Japan, apparently I have a cool Instagram. Our tour was not supposed to start until Friday March 6th, but everyone on the tour arrived in Japan earlier and most of us stayed at the Shiba Park Hotel, which was maybe the most expensive hotel I booked while in Japan.
Charles’s Day 3 would have been technically my Day 2 in Japan, but upon arrival in Japan I paid for a very expensive cab to the hotel then basically went to bed, but the next day we did do some sightseeing and of course we went drinking as you can see above. We actually went to two whisky bars, Milwaukee which was not made famous by whisky and Aloha.
There will be an entire post dedicated to drinking and touring distilleries to be written later, but I wanted to test including Charle’s almost real time account of our travels and the first thing I could find which if you watched has my picture is our account of visiting Milwaukee’s which specialized in bourbon, despite being named after a city in Wisconsin not Kentucky.
Japanese Public Transit
I dubbed this section “Japanese Public Transit” but a lot of the train lines are actually private enterprises and are often owned by shopping centres. So the train will run from a smaller city or suburb and stop at a shopping complex for your convenience. Since I left Japan even more trains and stops have likely been added especially in Tokyo, which I believe has the largest or perhaps busiest metro system in the world. It is pretty amazing. I’m more of an expert in Shanghai’s metro having lived there for four years, but the great thing about Japan, especially post World Cup and after the invention of the smart phone is how easy it is to navigate.
I didn’t plan to write a Shanghai versus Tokyo blog post. But as a former resident of Shanghai, yeah I’m voting Tokyo, maybe if my Chinese was better, but Tokyo just seems more fun. Tokyo of course has amazing food and shopping. But as I told my tour guide in Nara, why I like Japan over China is basically what they value and one thing Japan values is reading, they have the best bookstores in Asia. I used to read a lot and still want to read more, so book stores, cafes, and by extension record stores and pubs is how I judge a place I visit.
For example, Inverness has a great book store, plenty of pubs, even if you think it is a bit touristy, it is almost a must visit if you go to the Scottish Highlands even if just for connections. Northern Scotland is a lot less populous and takes a lot more careful planning to navigate solo than Japan, which seems to have another train whereever you want to go in 15 minutes.
Never have I taken the Shinkansen so much. When I lived in Japan I was a poor English teacher so going to Tokyo by Shinkansen was a big deal and often I chose to take say the Meitetsu line or some other slower cheaper line than pay for the Shinkansen. This time in Japan I tended to choose fast and easy and while we were a group we stuck together through many trains, buses, and subways. The consensus opinion was the Shinkansen was great but some people did Uber a lot or we would take what was known as “jumbo taxies” basically vans when we were traveling as a group.
If you are traveling by yourself, which I did for part of this trip and have done many times, public transit or the cheap trains are indeed cheap and easy during the day time. I successfully bought many train and subway tickets, most machines will do English and most trains will call out the stops in English. This wasn’t the case twenty plus years ago, you had to learn some kanji and pay much more attention to what stop you needed to get off at. Now most stations have staff that can speak English or they will use their smart phone to get you safely on your way if you are lost and confused.
Tokyo’s Many Districts
I once stayed in Gotanda. That is not a famous district in Tokyo. My first hotel in Tokyo was in Minato this is quite close to Tokyo Tower a landmark I’d never visited before. I don’t think I’d ever even visited this district but it is obviously more famous than Gotanda, which I may not even have photos of.
Although I did pass through many train and subway stations, probably not as many as I did back in the day. We also had a small group and quite a bit of luggage so although I travel light and had literally the same backpack I had last time, others in our group gradually acquired more and more luggage so I and especially Charles had to lend a hand, but everyone got everywhere safely and I believe a good time was had by all, so now that I’ve spoiled the ending you don’t have to read any further.
Shibuya vs Shinjuku
Shibuya may be my favourite district in Tokyo, but for some reason I stayed in Shinjuku. I’m not sure I would still know Shibuya but it was tradition to meet friends, especially Yoshiko at a very specific statue. Ginza was always too rich for my blood, but I always hear the food is great. I did not visit that district this time, most districts besides Minato and Shinjuku I just passed through or completely didn’t visit this trip, which is why this may not be my last trip to Tokyo or Japan.
teamLab Borderless
This is another thing besides Tokyo Tower that Charles had planned to do the day he found me, so of course I went. It was definitely cool and you can walk around the place for hours taking videos and photos. I definitely took some pictures and video but here is someone else’s review of teamLab Borderless they placed on YouTube.
Reunions
Although I seem to have lost touch with Yoshiko once again. I did have something of a reunion in Tokyo with someone I met twenty plus years before. People were definitely surprised I came back to Japan after twenty years, but they forget I did visit in 2016 and they maybe were not aware of all the difficulties I’ve gone through since 2004.
I wonder if this picture has a weird filter on it, because I didn’t take it. This was at a little izakaya in Shinjuku. I am a big fan or little izakayas and Saya picked this one out of all the places in Tokyo or at least in Shinjuku.
Onward to Chichibu
Japanese geography experts will note that Chichibu is not in Tokyo, it is actually in Saitama prefecture. Nonetheless our group had to meet in Tokyo to travel to Chichibu, this was a lot of logistics. Some of us met a day or two before as documented above, but then the full group assembled and travelled to Chichibu. Afterwards we both had to get back to Tokyo then get to Haneda Airport so we could fly South. The purpose of visiting Chichibu was of course whisky but we did see a nice shrine, which may actually host a whisky festival. Whisky has become synonymous with Chichibu but it also famous for hiking and of course visiting temples.
There are many, many temples and shrines in Japan and we visited a famous one in Minato which I’ll have to included photos of. We actually visited multiple shrines, we got in a lot of steps in Tokyo, but we also ate gyoza and of course had to seek out a couple whisky bars for the ‘Gram. I took over 1000 photos with my iPhone on this trip, the best of them will end up on Flickr in this album, which includes photos I’ve taken in Japan over the last twenty or so years.
I used to also “pin” images from my blog to a board on Pinterest, but lately Pinterest doesn’t seem to want to let me, I think they want even larger images, whereas I pay all my hosting costs and make zero dollars off this blog, so you’ll just have to pin my images for me from Flickr perhaps.
Then we finally went to Kyushu
When I signed up for this tour, one of the reasons I did so is I’d never been to Chichibu but most of our time was actually spent in Kyushu which I’d also never visited. So after our quick jaunt to Chichibu we flew to Kagoshima and that is where the blog series will resume. If you have questions about Tokyo or actually think Shanghai is better you can leave a comment below.
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