It wasn’t even half a year, and I already went and came back from my second trip of the year to Japan! This time was a bit special: I entered the lottery for the iDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS 10TH MEMORIAL LIVE concert. I won’t go into too much detail here, since I covered it here. I went to Japan for two weeks, and the live was right bam smack in the middle. I planned a couple of things to do before and after so this post just documents it for myself. I ramble a bit here so please bear with me. 🙂
I flew out on All Nippon Airways from YVR to HND. No problems there: it was a decent, smooth flight. I arrived on August 30th at 7PM. Going through customs and immigration was smooth, as I did my declaration through the Visit Japan site, which generated a QR code that could be presented to customs.
After grabbing my luggage, I made my way to the train station, and got to Shinagawa station, the closest Shinkansen station, and made my way towards Nagoya, where I would stay for a few nights.
Nagoya
Nagoya is a city I’ve passed by several times before: every time I go to and from Osaka, the Shinkansen will always stop here. This time around, I decided to stop and explore the area by myself.
Going in September, the summer heat was still around: I basically had to put on sunscreen as it was a blaring 35C and humid with sunshine. I brought along a hat, and went out. I stopped by a coffee shop in one of the underground shopping areas close to the train station, and got breakfast. This place (and others, as I found out later on) had what they called “morning service”, where you could get a breakfast sandwich/egg that included a hot drink. I got a blend coffee, and additionally ogura toast, which was red bean/azuki on top of buttered toast. That was a combination I’d never tried before, and it was pretty damn good!
I like visiting local landmarks, so the one thing I planned was to go to Nagoya-jo, otherwise known as Nagoya Castle. I walked around the castle grounds, basically treating it like the morning walks my parents usually do back home. I got to take a self-guided tour inside the golden keep, but the main castle was under renovations/maintenance, so I only got a photo from the outside. They did have a photo booth, in which I did get my photo taken 🙂
After my morning stroll, I headed back to the subway station, and went towards Sakae, where there were more underground shopping malls. Really glad I did that, cause damn it was getting really hot. I roamed around, and ended up getting hamburg steak for lunch at this place called Schmatz. Seems like it’s a chain restaurant specializing in hamburg steaks. It was pretty good.
Afterwards, I did try roaming to find other shops. I did stop at 3 Coins, which is the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store, and bought myself a coin pouch, cause I forgot to bring one. That one’s now my JPY coin pouch, which came in handy as I liked using it for arcade and coin laundry.
Roaming around blew through quite a bit of time, and it was time for me to stop at another cafe for my afternoon coffee. Given I wanted to beat jetlag, getting some caffeinated coffee was my best bet. I found a neat place called Hario Cafe Lampwork Factory. I have some Hario V60 stuff at home, so it felt pretty natural to come here and check it out. I enjoyed a nice cup of iced coffee inside to escape the heat.
I headed towards Osu afterwards, where there were more anime shops around. I roamed inside of a Mandarake, GAMERS, and Lashinbang before ending up by a Taito Station, where I played some arcade games. My go-to games last trip was Chuunithm and maimai, but this time around, I decided to try out this other game my friend Tatsu hyped me up about called Ongeki. It’s also a rhythm game where you control three girls and hit notes to the beat and dodge attacks from an enemy using a left-right joystick. Each girl represented a different colour note (red, green, blue), accompanied by two side edge notes for a total of 5 different notes plus the movement portion. It was surprisingly quite a fun game, with cute character designs and great songs from many composers I recognized, including Inoue Taku and TeddyLoid.
Unsurprisingly, this game also features gacha in the form of card maker, where you can spend 100 JPY to roll for a character (with varying rarities), and then print them out as a card to use on the Ongeki machine. I actually really liked this: you spent 100 JPY to literally print out a PNG that’s also a personal collectible but can also be used in-game to select different characters. You also have the option of adding a holographic effect to any card for an additional 100 JPY. I will say: I spent quite a bit adding holo effects to my SSR cards 🙂
I also did eat breakfast at the VIA hotel I stayed at. It was buffet style, so I got a bunch of stuff I liked. Only had a few photos, so here they are:
On my last day before I left Nagoya, I managed to go to momoco’s art exhibition in Maruzen, which is a bookstore. I bought some goodies for myself and some friends, including an artbook!
Osaka Expo
The next place on my list was Osaka. I only stayed for two nights: I mainly wanted to visit the world expo being helped in Osaka this year, given I was already in Japan. Given I had bought my plane tickets only a couple of weeks in advance and forgot about this until a few days prior to leaving, I didn’t enter any of the lotteries to enter specific pavilions.
Honestly, the expo itself was so-so. I did enjoy walking around the large, elevated outer wooden oval thing, as that gave a nice upper vantage viewpoint of the various building architectures that each country went with. There were basically lines everywhere, so the only pavilion I went into was the Canada one, since Canadian passport holders get priority, front-of-line access. I will say, we had some cool augmented reality stuff showcasing Canada’s various cities laid on top of the physical tundra-like landscape.
I don’t know if they do fireworks: it was raining the day I went so there was none. That said, after sunset, they had a waterworks display for people to watch from seating below, and also on the boardwalk above. It was pretty nice to see.
iDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS 10TH MEMORIAL LIVE
Not much to add since I talked about it in this post, so I’m just going to skip over it in this post.
Hakone, Again
I went back to Hakone again this trip. Last time, I didn’t have a good time due to my stomach not cooperating. This time, I planned another visit to Hakone immediately after the iM@S concert for two nights. I had a very relaxing, enjoyable time unwinding after two days of jamming out and cheering for my oshis.
I stayed at TENYU in the Mikawaya area in Hakone. I was here earlier this year and in 2023, staying at Mikawaya Ryokan which was just a 3 minute walk from Yunessun. TENYU is connected to Yunessun via an indoor footbridge, and has complimentary access to Yunessun and and Mori no Yu, the naked public baths beside Yunessun.
The check-in process was pretty smooth. I walked in from the Yunessun footbridge, which landed me in the first floor of the building. Reception was on the 4th floor, so I went back up and was greeted by friendly staff. General Japanese omotenashi was showcased very well: after being checked in, I was guided to my room by an attendant, and she was telling me about the features of my room, and asked about my travels and my origins. I did get to practice a little bit of conversational Japanese, so that pretty nice.
I stayed on the eighth floor of the building, looking southwards towards the distant mountains. There are more expensive rooms looking towards nearby mountains and forests, which give a more secluded look, but the views were were still really nice while bathing. The outdoor deck does have privacy curtains you can pull down while bathing, but I didn’t have a need for them since there are no nearby buildings that look down on the deck area. Generally the room was very spacious for one person: this was expected since these types of rooms are typically designed to comfortably fit couples or a small family of four.
This place, similar to other ryokans/onsen hotels in the area, offer half-board dining: breakfast and dinner are included in your stay. This time, I opted for the buffet option because it was slightly cheaper, and I wasn’t sure if I could finish all the food in a kaiseki/set menu dining option. The general food options were pretty good. I wish I took a photo while walking around the dining area, but there was a variety of food: fries, sushi, seafood, fruit like cubed pineapples and mangos, and miso soup. There’s definitely something for everyone to enjoy.
This place had two public baths in the building: one for men and the other for women. They swap daily, so I definitely recommend staying at least two nights to get the best experience. Obviously, I don’t have any photos inside the bath, but one had a mountain view similar to the one I could see from my room, while the other was a forest view with a small little waterfall. Both have tenburo (天風呂), or outdoor baths, so you can literally be outside bathing in the nice hot water. Even though it was like ~35°C in the city, the shade and mountain side made bathing outside really nice: it felt more like a nice ~25°C during the day. I could only imagine what it would feel like if I came during the winter. Definitely something I’ll want to try at some point.
Aside from the public hot spring baths, there is a sauna in each bath. It has seating for around 15-20 people, but when I went in the morning at around 6:30/7AM, it was pretty chill: not a lot of people. After you’re down sweating it out, TENYU does have a couple of massage chairs outside each bath. My dad would love that! I did a 15 minute session on both days after I did a morning soak in the public baths, and it was super relaxing.
After exhausting the public baths, I went to Mori no Yu next door. No photos of the outside, since I didn’t bring my phone with me to a bathhouse lol. I don’t recall if the men and women’s sides would change daily, since I only went on one of the days. They had an assortment of different baths on the men’s side, ranging from some tea-infused baths to shallow baths where you could lie completely flat and enjoy the sky. I only went during the day (albeit a nice sunny day with blue skys) so I had a decent view, but I’d imagine coming closer to the evening would also be super nice.
I’m so glad I came after the iM@S concert, it definitely helped me relax and forget about work: it slowed down the world around me, and it was a really nice way to give myself some self-care.
Ikebukuro Fun
After onsen, it was back to the Tokyo metropolitan area. I stayed in Ikebukuro, and went to Round 1 every single day. I did solo karaoke a few times, and got some Gakumas collab goodies while I sang my heart out. I played more Ongeki and ended up printing out more cards.
I pretty much just chilled and walked around. On one day, I got coffee again at my favourite place Sarutahiko Coffee THE BRIDGE in Harajuku, visited IKEA Harajuku, roamed Shibuya and found Paolo fromTokyo‘s hot sauce vending machine! Needless to say, I bought one to support: Paolo and Maiko make some great videos!
Contrary to what I usually do, I snagged a couple of prize figures, but I’ll write about that in another post.
On my last day, I did manage to make one last stop to Asakusa before I boarded an express train to Haneda airport. I wanted to grab some last minute desserts, like iced coffee, purin, and apple pie. I was craving them all but didn’t get a chance to snag some, so I was super happy I got them.
Next Trip?
Anyways, that’s all I had this time around. Now that I’ve been back for a bit, I’m already thinking about my next trip. Not sure when it’ll be next year (maybe in April), but hoping to see if I can go with some friends, perhaps for some biking 🙂 I liked solo travelling, but it did get a little bit lonely, so having someone else to bounce ideas and opinions for places to go would be nice.
Until next time!
~Lui
