Itinerary: Getting to Japan, Tokyo Disney Sea
Well, 6 months isn’t too too late to be documenting our Japan trip right?
We flew to Japan via Taipei. The whole flight took 24 hours, with 1am take off, arriving in Taipei at 6am, catching a 10am flight to Tokyo, arriving by 1pm, waiting for siblings, exchanging JR Pass etc, train into Tokyo proper, and finally arriving at our Air BNB at 4pm or so, which was around 1am US time.
All this to save on airfare. And no, we could not just do a stop over via Japan instead because only Eva and China airlines allow you to change your returning flight at no charge.
The nice thing about such a long flight was, no jet leg! With the children older than GYA13, it was a very effortless trip. I’ve learned to not stress out about their lack of sleep or watching so much TV; only insisting that they get some snooze after 4 hours of watching cartoons. After going to corner grocery store to pick up food, we ate a simple dinner at home and all went to bed by 8pm.
We spent the next day at Tokyo Disney Sea, the highlight of our trip for the children. The children go to Disneyland every year thanks to Grandma. This was such a different experience. It’s what they still talk about. I loved it too because the food was fantastic and so delicious, very unlike the food in the States.
It’s only September but Halloween celebration has already started!
The “sets” in Disney Sea are all huge and way better than California Adventure.
My favorite “land” was the steam punk theme area.
One of the many interesting food sold.
September is Japan’s wettest month. We were very lucky that during our time there, always managing to bypass the rain when we needed to do a full day out. In fact, our day at Disney Sea was 85 degrees! It cooled down considerably the following day.
Tips:
1. It took us forever to decide where to stay with Airbnb. Definitely stay on a stop on the JR Yamanote line. Even better for us was that we were only 1 train stop away from where the train from the airport stopped. It would have been so tiring after a long flight to transfer trains. All we needed to do was take a taxi to our apartment.
I also learned that I much enjoy staying in clean, newer residential parts rather than older neighborhoods with older apartments or busy famous train stops. At the end of the night, it was very lovely to walk the 10 minutes home quietly. Or swing by a grocery store for random snacks.
2. With young children, double any stated walking from train station time in Airbnb. It’s a shock having to walk so much when you first start traveling. Be nice to your feet at the end of the day.
3. Japanese Airbnbs tend to over-state the number of bedrooms since each living room can “convert” to a bedroom. So we looked for a 3 bedroom instead of 2 to house 5 people. Amazingly, Tokyo was the cheapest leg of our trip and was the second nicest apartments we stayed in.
