Doei Hokkaido: Tokyo

So, after our wonderful trip through Hokkaido, we spent the last few days in Tokyo before heading back to Sweden! When we arrived by plane, we had the most amazing views of endless Tokyo with even mount Fuji in the back. We also had a great view over Shibuya, which we ofcourse would visit!

The nightlife in Tokyo is just something. We love to walk around for hours and take photos of all the colors and characters. Our hotel was in Shinjuku so a perfect base to start exploring Tokyo by night.

The next morning we got up early and got a cute breakfast before heading to Setagaya for the Shirow Masamune exhibition!

Shirow Masamune is famous for his manga “Ghost in the shell” but he made many more, and this exhibition showed tons of his sketches and inspiration. It was really inspiring!

The rest of the day we spent walking around Shinjuku and Shibuya, soaking in the atmosphere.

The “shibuya patrol” car was driving around, broadcasting warning messages to foreigners to watch out for scams and overpriced bars etc. Ofcourse this car was incredibly cute:

Shibuya is one of the busiest areas in Tokyo!

And we walked back from Shibuya to Shinjuku, passing Harajuku. Can you spot us??

We visited the famous Akihabara neighborhood as well, filled with anime, manga, game and tech shops. I did some shopping in the fantastic tech market, because the little tech thingies looked so beautiful haha

Our second day in Tokyo we visited the Mokuhonkan, a beautiful woodblock print shop in Asakusa, where we bought a couple of prints, and then had one beef skewer for lunch that cost 20 euros, because it was the most high quality beef you could get XD And it really was incredibly delicious! You have to do some crazy stuff in Tokyo.

We then headed to Jimbocho, a neighborhood in Tokyo famed for its old bookshops!

We found some beautiful books there about Studio Ghibli! We ended our day strolling around Shinjuku and had some nice ramen dinner :) It is our favorite ramen, that we discovered during a trip to Hakata in 2011 (14 years ago!!) and made such an impression on us back then. I can’t believe that 14 years later we are still going to the same ramen shop :D
This was now, and below a photo of 14 years ago…!

We decided to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building in Shinjuku, this is a high skyscraper with an observation platform on top!

Shinjuku’s financial district is a contrast with its bar areas; here you find huge skyscrapers with the wildest designs, wide lanes, parks and underground passageways.

Everyone still at work at night:

The Metropolitan building was lit up in red!

From the top, we had beautiful views over Tokyo:

We walked through the underground tunnels back to our hotel.

At the airport the next day, we had a final sushi breakfast!

Aaaaaaaand that was our trip. Maybe one of my favorite ones. I think Hokkaido was incredibly inspiring and fresh for us to travel around, and our two days in Tokyo also were so much fun.

We bought tons of souvenirs, but here are some of my favorites:

A beautiful book full of ideas and sketches by Hayao Miyazaki, before he made the movie Nausicaa.
A full set of 32 poster colour jars. These are used to paint anime backgrounds, and are in between waterpaint and gouache. We painted tons of images with these during our trip.
This beetle XD It looks so realistic in its details! Just the thing you would find in Japan :)

Goodbye Japan, till next time!