Matt and Lisa's Adventures

18 December 2025

After early starts for the past three days we had a slower start today. We caught the Shinkansen back to Tokyo and then a local JR train to Shinjuku. The local train was running late which is very unusual. As a result of it running late it was absolutely packed. Luckily we managed to get a seat and tried to keep our luggage as out of the way as possible. You could hear the groans as more people pushed themselves on at each stop. Eventually we arrived and then got completely lost getting out of Shinjuku station – which isn’t surprising as it is massive and the busiest train station in the world (3 million people per day). We eventually made it to the hotel which is fine but it does feel like the standard of our hotels has fallen over the course of the trip. 

We set out to explore the Shinjuku area. This was just a disorganised wander but we got the feel for what is a crazy, over the top entertainment area. 

Beer time was at a British pub opposite our hotel. Turns out the pub we went to in Osaka is a chain and there are several pubs in Shinjuku.

Dinner was at a teppanyaki place called “200 degrees” Lisa found which was very good. We had wagyu steak, vegetables, a weird cheese and garlic pizza, a grilled onion and an okonomoyaki. Best meal we have had in Japan! We sat at the grill so we could watch them cook the food which was also great fun. 

19 December 2025

Lisa has been doing Duolingo since forever – she has been learning French and is quite good at reading it but not so great at speaking it. This is a source of frustration whenever we got to France as Duolingo has very annoying sounds that I hear everyday when she does it. She is now on a 2000+ days streak and maintaining that streak is of very high importance! 

Lisa had discovered there was a pop up Duolingo shop in Shibuya. We arrive fifteen minutes before opening and there was already a substantial queue. People were very excited and some were purchasing lots of merchandise. Lisa purchased a bag and got a free sticker for being a loyal member. We also managed to get a photo with Duo who is the owl from the logo. I didn’t really understand any of it. But it made Lisa very happy and that was the goal! 

Then it was on to Ueno on the train for our walking tour with Zuzanna. She was Polish and had interesting perspectives on Japan and the how the Japanese see the world. The first part of the tour focused on samurai and the second on modern Japanese culture. 

• We went to a temple that was combined with a shrine. Having been to several temples and shrines on this trip it was very weird to see the two together. As most Japanese people do both it makes some sense but with a Christian background it’s hard to see how the differing deities would get along
• Outside a different Buddhist temple there was a tree that had a circular branch which is a key symbol of the religion. The plant had been shaped this way as the tree grew. It seemed weird to say but it also most felt mean to do this to a plant rather than letting it grow naturally
• There was a state of the last samurai. In the late 1800s the shogun had become difficult. There was a lot of support for putting the emperor back in charge of everything again. This led to a war between the supporters of the emperor and the supporters of the shogun. Many samurai had transitioned from their support from the Shogun to the emperor. The emperor won and became the sole power in Japan again. Samurais on both sides had been concerned that the emperor would removed their privileges which he indeed did ten years later. The last samurai tried to protest this and ended up committing seppoku (ritual suicide). None of this had anything to do with Tom Cruise
• Maid cafes are a big thing in Japan. This is where you go to a cafe and a maid does your bidding. It isn’t a sexual thing and lots of girls, children and families go these cafes. It seems like a very weird concept to us but it is incredibly popular with the biggest cafe having seven floors! There are also weird themes such as cat girls who will pretend to be cats and even meow when they talk
• We went through Akihabara which is known as “electric city”. This used to be the major area for selling electronics and computers. These days most of this is sold online. It is now more of an entertainment area with just a small section that shows what it used to be like
• Suzanne said that despite the reputation Japan is often very backwards when it comes to technology. She gave the examples of needing five apps to be able to sign up for online banking and in the end she could see but couldn’t interact with her bank accounts. It is very bureaucratic and slow to embrace technology. There is also a cultural reluctance to engage with foreigners and learn from them
• Japan had a lot of issues with loneliness and social isolation which contributes to all sorts of social problems. Young women in particular don’t want to be stuck with useless young men and so are reluctant to date. Women are paid less than men and are expected to stop working when they get married and have children. None of this helps with Japan’s critically low birth rate
• Our group included an older Australian couple who asked lots of questions some of which were a bit weird. The woman also took photos of everything! We hadn’t been able to get cash out for paying so I had to sneak away near the end to get some cash from a 7-11. When it came time to pay the Australian lady was pulling out her coins. Lisa was pushing  me in there to show the more reasonable payment for the tour. 

It was then back to the hotel for a quick rest before we headed to our sumo show. 

• We had two wrestlers: Mr Kujo and Mr Edo. Mr Edo was about twice the size which didn’t make for the fairest of fights. 
• The MC gave some history around sumo. It had existed for over 1500 years as there are references to it in ancient Shinto texts. It is very closely associated with the Shinto religion and originally started as a religious practice rather than a sporting event
• There are no weight classes. This means you can have big and small fighters in the same bout. It can often be a competition between size and speed which makes things interesting
• They went through their morning practice routine. They did their leg stomps of which they would normally do 300 to 1000 of per morning to build lower body strength. 
• They showed four of the common ways of winning a bout. They also showed illegal moves such as punching (but slapping is allowed), kicking above the knee, eye gouging and hair pulling. We got to boo them when they did illegal things, which Lisa was very enthusiastic for 
• It was a classic comedy setup with Mr Kujo playing the straight man with Mr Edo as the comedian. He was very good and quite funny
• They were asked what they ate for breakfast – McDonalds and KFC. Mr Edo was asked how he got involved, he said his mother pushed him into it when she realised he was a fat kid!
• The bout itself went for three rounds even though Mr Edo was clearly the better fighter (and had a big weight advantage). It all looked very choreographed but it was great fun to cheer them along
• Members of the audience could also challenge the wrestlers which proved to be a bit of fun. We finished off getting photos with the wrestlers
• It was very much a show rather than an actual match but considering that most actual matches only last a few seconds this was much better value and very entertaining. Lisa got very engaged and loved being part of the show with cheering and booing the competitors

Had a quick beer at the British pub. It was pumping, evidently Friday night in Shinjuku is busy! This had an impact on dinner options as everywhere was busy. We ended up at a burger place under our hotel. They did good burgers, but very juicy.

20 December 2025

In Yokohama we started with the standard coffee and a wander around a few shopping malls. We didn’t have a walking tour so we were using a basic guide from the app “GPS My City” – it wasn’t very good. 

First up was the landmark building which used to be the tallest in Japan. From ground level there wasn’t much to see other than it being a big building. The mall underneath it was underwhelming.   Although it did have a weird Tom and Jerry Christmas setup.  We ended up at the mall next door for lunch. Lisa had some bakery stuff (boring). I had a very nice karage chicken meal. In the mall there was a stage with Japanese high school a capella singers performing – it’s fair to say they were not very good (in fact, some were flat our terrible). 

Next stop was the cup of noodles museum. This had some good information about the history of the product. It was started by Momofuku Ando who came up with the concept for flash fried noodles that could be stored and then rehydrated by adding hot water. This was what he called chicken ramen but became known as magic ramen. Years later he came up with the idea of putting them in a cup to make it even easier – this came from a trip to the USA where he realised people would eat them with a fork and wanted it to be even faster. He developed some cool technology for putting the cup on top of the noodles rather than putting the noodles into the cup – there was a lot of propaganda around what an amazing idea this was. There were many competitors who were creating sub standard noodles. He shared his patents with them to increase the quality and safety for everyone. His last invention was for “space ram” – which is instant noodles that can be eaten in space, quite a niche market. 

There were also opportunities to create your own noodle flavours and cup, as well as a massive play area for children but we didn’t have time to experience that. 

We continued our walk past the famous red brick building which is know a market, along the waterfront with Christmas markets and skating rinks before heading to Chinatown. It was a very impressive Chinatown buzzing with people. The usual food stalls, dragons and decorations. One thing that was unusual was lots of stalls for palm readings – these had little profiles outside so you could check that you were going to get one who knew what they were doing. 

Overall Yokohama felt pretty dreary and unexciting compared to Tokyo ands Osaka. There wasn’t a lot there and this was in the exciting tourist area down by the waterfront so I hate to think what the rest of it was like. However, this may have been one of those times where a guide would have helped and could have inspired us to love Yokohama by providing some much needed context – however, I suspect not. 

It was then back in the train to Shinjuku through the madness of the growing crowds and home for a quick rest. 

At the noodles museum I was given a program which is very nice but it highlights one of the challenges in Japan. There are virtually no public rubbish bins and you are expected to carry your rubbish back with you. This meant I was stuck carrying this worthless booklet around for hours to just throw it out as soon as I got back to the hotel. The reason for the lack of bins is that in the 1990s there was a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway and the bombs had been hidden in rubbish bins. The response was to largely remove all bins and any remaining bins are see through plastic. As one other tourist remarked when a guide told us this: “you don’t think that this was maybe a bit of an overreaction?” Especially as there are luggage storage lockers everywhere in train stations. I would have thought this would have been more of a security risk. 

Dinner was at the restaurant in our hotel which sounds boring but we are in a cool hotel. The restaurant is very busy and also serves various Japanese craft beers. To get there we had to walk through an art gallery displaying photos of Tokyo with lots of arty type people hanging around – obviously this is totally our scene! 

Then we had our Shinjuku night walking tour with Bryant which was billed as “the dark side of Shinjuku” and it did live up to the name. 

• The yakuza pretty much owns and runs Shinjuku. They own most of the businesses and make huge money from them. They are in business with the government and the government allows them this area on the agreement that it stays in this area. The street for doing drug deals is around the corner from a police station but they turn a blind eye to it. 
• There are restaurants that do very cheap food along with all you can drink packages. Around NZ$13 for 90 mins.  Very generous but also cynical as a lot of this is to liquor people up for the other options that come later
• There are lots of adult entertainment options in the area and most of it is out in open. We even ran into an old lady who Bryant described as a legend whose job it is to help people find the entertainment they want. She seemed too lovely for a job like that
• There are information centres around the area. They look like a normal information centre from the outside but inside the staff will help you find free lancer adult entertainers who cater for your particular area of interest. 
• There is a lot of street prostitution with young girls waiting outside “love hotels”. We were there on a rainy night and so it was quieter than normal but even so there were still dozens of girls out. It was so wired seeing it be so open with men wandering around talking to the girls. The girls were mostly very young. 
• There was a clear area for drug dealers and again everything was very open. They do have a rule that people have to take the drugs away and no one is allowed to do drugs in the street. No one wants the area to have junkies lying about, that’s a bad look for everyone’s business. Prostitues also can’t do drugs. This is all helped by everything being run by the yakuza so it is all basically one big business – easy to set and enforce rules
• The only drugs sold were weed, cocaine and meth. They used to do MDMA and mushrooms but too many overdoses with MDMA so “they” banned it – I assume this meant the yakuza
• There are a huge number of host and hostess clubs. In Japan there are lots of young women who want affection and don’t get it from Japanese men who are overworked and don’t have time or energy for relationships. They go to host clubs where they have attractive men they can talk to. They buy overpriced bottles of alcohol for them which leads to dates. The hosts manipulate the women and squeeze them for more money. Often these women have rich families so they have a lot of money and can also be blackmailed. Successful hosts can make huge amounts of money which fuels more people to want to become hosts especially when wages for normal jobs are often very low. As well as the male hosts for women there are hostess clubs for men. Attractive males in Japan have a very feminine look with longish hair and often wearing makeup. Apparently this is the desired look for Japanese women. Our guide speculated this comes from anime. 
• We finished in Golden Gai which is a set of lane ways with lots of tiny bars. When I was here last time with Will we went to one and had a few beers – it was good times. 

Not a lot of photos from this tour again as it didn’t feel right to be taking photos in a lot of these areas.

It was a very good tour and a sad view into the dark aspects of Japan. A lot of this aligns with other tours we have done here which talked about the over working and loneliness of young Japanese people. All of that ultimately leads to these dark outcomes. 

21 December 2025

We fulfilled Lisa’s desire for more soufflé pancakes at a cafe across the road. Then we split up for the day. Lisa went shopping and hung around in Shinjuku while I headed off to Ueno park. 

I went to the National Museum of Tokyo and it was pretty disappointing. They had some quite good rooms telling the story of the different types of art in Japan over history but then halfway through I discovered the rest of the exhibition was closed for maintenance. I tried to enjoy Asian art but it just doesn’t do much for me.

I decided to try a different museum in the afternoon going to the National Museum of Western Art (a cool logo). This was much more my style with lots of artists I knew such as: Renoir, Monet and Veronese. It felt like being back on a European trip! 

One advantage is that the museums here are very cheap which makes it compelling to try them out or spend only short period of time as it isn’t a big financial investment. The National museum was 1,000 yen (about NZ$12) and the western art museum was 500 yen (about NZ$6). 

On my last trip here I had gone to the robot restaurant with Will. Will then took Amy a couple of nights later where Amy got to fight the robot! Sadly, the robot restaurant is no more, but the successor is the samurai show! 

The building was bling and more bling. Over the top and like nothing we would get in New Zealand which reflected what would come in show. 

• There was a long wait for it to start and while we waited they played a video saying you could use photo and video but no flash. After 15 minutes of this on loop with appropriately annoying music Lisa was starting to lose her mind and her composure
• It then started with a hiss and a roar with drummers, musicians, singers and dancers many of them on top of giant robot platforms. It was intense and made no sense. But it was very loud and kind of fun. Lisa was completely baffled by what she was seeing 
• We had sake for free in the intermission (well I did, Lisa didn’t). It was my first time on this trip and it will also be the last. It was ok, but not really for me
• There was then a performance with dancers about two samurais fighting – why was unclear
• In between performances they tried to sell merchandise and more drinks. I don’t think they sold much merchandise and 4:30pm is a weird time to be having a whole lot of drinks. Strangely this was the latest show of the day. I’m not sure if people want sake and beer at the 11am show – they might be on a different type of holiday from us if they are doing that. 
• The last segment was Christmas themed with a medley of Christmas songs that we enthusiastically sang along to while waving our light sticks. This part got Lisa excited and managed to redeem the show a little bit in her eyes. But, it was noted there were no samurais in this segment. 

22 December 2025

We then did our final packing up, it was with much fuller cases than when we had arrived. After a quick Starbucks we went for our final Japanese activity – karaoke! After a quick Gemini search to find out how it works we entered Big Echo and booked a room for an hour. It was interesting. Neither of us are great singers and the music was very loud. But once we embraced it and just had a laugh, it was actually a lot of fun. I can see why people enjoy it. 

We did learn that good rock songs are more our bag (Bohemian Rhapsody, Living on a Prayer, Monkey Wrench) and fast paced, wordy songs (Gold Digger and Single Ladies) are not for us. 

Then it was off to the airport where we spent a bit of time in the very nice Turkish Airlines Lounge. The flight home was very nice, although neither of us got much sleep. Then it was off for an amazing Christmas time in Whakatane!

Overall we had an amazing trip. Different to previous trips with a much simpler itinerary – just two cities in one country. It was nice not having to constantly pack up and travel. We also explored at a much slower pace having to take into account Lisa getting rest but it still worked really well. 

Overall thoughts on Japan:

• Very polite people. Everyone lines up, no one jay walks, everyone is just so polite. Everyone obeys rules in the train – no eating or drinking, be quiet
• Very easy to get around. The trains of all types were just fantastic. It’s also amazing how cheap the metro is. We spent less money on local trains for one person over two weeks than what we spent on a single uber in Los Angeles
• Most people we interacted with could speak some English but generally not of a high quality. We could normally make ourselves understood. Very helpful when there are signs/machines in English
• There are definitely strong archetypes for people – salary man, school girl, dressed up girls. Fashion is generally very conservative except for some young women and they tend to be quite outrageous with short skirts, massive shoes, high socks, long nails and interesting makeup
• Which side of the footpath to walk is not clear and changes not just between cities, but within cities and I swear every sometimes within a single train station. Just make it consistent people!
• It feels like a very lonely society. Lots of people but everyone living in their own bubble. This is especially visible on the train where everyone is using their own phone and largely in zombie mode. 
• The loneliness combines with entertainment particularly anime. It seems that people are more engaged with these fantasy worlds than they are with the real world. This leads to unrealistic expectations and weird fantasy world desires
• Generally very compliant with laws. However it is depressing seeing signs about up skirting and the fact that phones in Japan cannot have their camera noise disabled shows how bad this issue is

Final random selection of photos: