This post has been back-dated a day to fit in the timeline properly. Last post also incoming this weekend. I’m sitting now in our Sydney apartment after half an hour on the train and airport monorail in Tōkyō, a ten hour flight due south, navigating Australia’s immigration and quarantine at the airport, and an hour on Sydney’s metro and trains. We’re lucky that Japan and Australia’s eastern seaboard are within an hour of each other, so there’s little jetlag to add to the mix. I now return you to Ruben who was on the plane writing this post. We got up yesterday tossing up whether to go to Nakano Broadway or Ikebukuro, but the latter won out. Nakano Broadway is the world’s best place for second-hand pop culture stuff, everything from anime to model trains. It’s like a massive, living museum of everything we love in the world. But I also bought an OM SYSTEM OM-3, and we’d been travelling for three weeks, so for the sake of our wallets we chose the latter. The hotel luckily let us stow our luggage while we went wandering, so we hopped on a train at Jimbocho, this time on the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi line. If you’ve ever wanted to see what a platform looks like on a typical Tōkyō subway station: Okay, these are awful shots, but I was trying to avoid getting pictures of people’s faces up close. Turns out, that’s hard to do even when it’s not peak hour! Tōkyō’s subways have greater capacity now, and are less busy than their peak when they needed guards to physically shove people into carriages, but it can still get… cozy. We made it to Ikebukuro and did what every tourist decided to do in the area that day: go to the Sunshine City 60 observation floor! I think of it as the Rockafeller Centre of Tōkyō, in that you can’t see the landmarks from the landmarks themselves. If you want a view of the SkyTree, or the Empire State Building, or the Sydney Opera House, you go somewhere else to see them. You really get a sense of the scale of Tōkyō when you view it from somewhere like this. It’s one of the fascinating things about this incredible city: it’s the largest metropolis in the world by some measures, and yet it doesn’t feel like it when you walk around on the street. You walk around Hong Kong, or even increasingly Singapore, and you feel the crush of people around you as you ferry yourself between stations and buildings. For Tōkyō’s reputation as a busy, packed city, most of its buildings and streets are relatively compact and low-rise, which gives it more of a human scale. But boy does it go forever! The CBD in particular seems to hug the entire horizon, every direction you turn. Not even New York felt this big, and certaily even Sydney’s five million people don’t compare! That’s what I find so fascinating about this city. It’s so intricate and organised, even among the tangle of streets. Here’s a view looking down on the main shopping street in Ikebukuro, with the station we arrived at towards the top. Back on the ground, we realised there was a Sanrio café in the underpass leading to Sunshine City. We had no choice in the matter, so we went in and ordered a few Pompompurin-themed deserts! With apologies to the other characters, but Pompom is clearly the best. It was all very cute, and surprisingly tasty; they could have phoned all this in and still drawn crowds. What struck me was the wide demographic of patrons: there was young parents with their preschool-aged kids, extremly fashionable Korean tourists in their torn goth skirts and dark makeup, and older Japanese couples smiling and giggling as their My Melody and Hello Kitty deserts arrived. We had a bit more of a wander around Ikebukuro, just happy to take in the sights and sounds. Everywhere you look there’s something to see and do; I feel like you could spend a lifetime exploring every inner and outer suburb of each Japanese city. I suspect a lot of people do. Alas, just as we thought it was safe to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags, a familiar logo appeared, and its siren song proved too much. This specific branch of Animate is (apparently!) the biggest single anime-themed store in the world; when we were last here in 2022 they were still upgrading it to its current gargantuan size. I think it’s eight floors now? We had a couple of specific franchises we wanted to check out, so we rushed to the respective floors, fighting our way through the mass of orderly but excited fans for the latest cute guy mobile game. They even had a mascot dressed up in a huge chibi costume, which was hilarious and adorable. I think there might have been a concert for it too. Taking pictures inside is discouraged, but I snuck this one photo of the Fate/Grand Order shelf. Just imagine this same style of shelf, repeated dozens upon dozens of times, on every single floor. Then imagine it crowded with everyone from casual players and viewers to the most diehard fans imaginable. I’m talking about people who have ita bags absolutely covered with badges of their favourite characters, jackets emblazoned with their names, and enough charms of the cast hanging off their phones and bags to be used as weapons. It’s actually a lot of fun to be surrounded by people who have the same weird, niche interests as you; I expect its the same feeling fans of American comics or shows like Star Trek feel when they go to cons. We made it out having taken only mild wallet-based damage, and got the train back to the hotel to retrieve our swollen baggage. As we made our way to the monorail station to take us to Haneda Airport, we saw a familiar friend pop up out of nowhere! I now know from going to Nagoya that their Mirai Tower was designed by the same person who imagined the Tōkyō Tower. The resemblance is unmistakable. The Tōkyō Monorail is an interesting experience. Compared to the fast and efficient Tokyo Metro, the Toei Subway, the JR lines, and all the third-sector railways, the Monorail feels… quaint? I’m sure it looked extremely futuristic in the 1960s, but the stations are cramped, and accessibility isn’t that great. While the train itself does get up to an impressive speed, you do lurch and tip around a lot. It feels more like a bus in the sky, which sounds more like a drug-induced Beatles song. That said though, you can’t beat the convenience! Unlike the Keikyū Airport Line that forces you to transfer at Keikyū Kamata or onwards to Shinagawa, the Monorail takes you directly there from the centre of town. You step off the train, pass through the ticket gates, and you’re right there at the terminal. There’s a simple truth about Tōkyō airports: you’ll always pick the wrong one. Tell regulars your airline is going to Haneda, and you’ll be told the more distant Narita is better because they have express trains and more food options, so why wouldn’t you choose that? Tell regulars you’re flying into Narita, and you’ll be told Haneda is closer to town and therefore more convenient, so why wouldn’t you choose that? I don’t know what privileged people do to specifically choose airports; we’ve only ever flown into what the airline gives us! Just know that if you mention either airport, it’s a bat signal, so best not to. It’s the same as people giving advice to always carry a plastic bag for rubbish: half the respondents will be surprised you need to, and the other half will call you silly for not knowing that. The Internet! But I’ll take one for the team: having also flown into Narita, I can say that Haneda is a lovely airport. They’ve clearly put the effort in to maintain and upgrade it with the times. It has that utilitarian vibe in places that most Japanese terminals have, but it’s as pleasant a place to be as one could hope for when you’re madly dashing between checking in bags, finding your gate, getting a bite to eat, and generally being anxious about whether you remembered to triple-check you removed all those lithium batteries from various devices and stuffed them in your carry-on. On a scale of 0 being Newark Liberty (sorry), 10 being Singapore Changi, and 6 being Sydney Kingsford Smith, I’d say it’s a solid 8. And of course everyone who works there is polite, compassionate, and patient to a fault, which proved useful when the self-serve check in machines glitched and refused to print our luggage tags. Cleary they weren’t using Brother! We went through immigration, and realised we were leaving the same gate we went to back in 2022! That meant we could camp out at the same little cafe we went to last time, and maintain our silly tradition of planting a flower for each time we travel on our shared “forever” Minecraft server. Can I just say, hand to heart, Clara is the most wonderful travel companion I could have hoped for. If I knew in my teens that I’d be living a lifestyle where we sacrifice in other areas so I could travel with a wonderful person every year or so to the best place in the world, I expect I’d have been far less worried and sad. It also helps that she speaks decent Japanese too (cough)! We boarded our Japan Airlines 787, and it took off exactly on time, because of course it did. Unlike the flight to Japan where I had a migraine and stomach bug so severe I spent much of the flight with vertigo in the bathroom, this red-eye was utterly unremarkable which was wonderful! I know this is a privileged thing to say, but purely from the perspective of my own anxiety and sleep, it was the first flight I think I can ever remember where there weren’t any screaming kids: they were either absent, or exceedingly well behaved! I know seasoned travellers say you should fly ANA, but we’ve been using Japan Airlines for years now and their service has always been spectacular. Because of course it always has been. There will be one more post in the series, but it might be a day or two late (like this one!) on account of being exhausted. But thanks again to everyone for your kind words; I didn’t intend for this to be a daily thing I did during this trip, but it was a lot of fun. By Ruben Schade in Tokyo, 2025-05-09.

Those of you who remember when I used to blog things that weren’t about travel, rejoice! This was our last full day in Japan before we travel back to Australia, with heavy hearts and significantly heavier baggage. I’m at our local Doutor having a coffee and thinking back to how great this was. The start was awful on account of that migraine and stomach bug that wouldn’t quit, but I was relived it only lasted a few days. Nagoya, Takoyama, and Toyama were so much fun! It’s always a novelty seeing somewhere new, but they were all amazing places. Toyama in particular is a place I could see myself moving to; I joked that it was our $SydneySuburb in Japan. We wanted to look for gifts for a few friends and family, so we spent our last full day in Tōkyō going to the requisite places. This meant Akihabara again, which honestly as a nerd wasn’t exactly an onerous requirement! Detractors claim Akihabara isn’t as good as it used to be, which may be true. But seeing all the pop culture I otherwise only ever see in a computer screen displayed out in the open and in dozens of stores, and more electronics than I’d be exposed to in Australia in a given year, it’s something else. To get there we walked a slightly different route, which took us under that famed JR arch bridge. It’s honestly far larger, higher, and more impressive in person than any of the photos online I’d seen suggest. But first was brunch! The first time we went to Akihabara I was only able to keep water and those CalorieMate blocks down, so we decided to re-visit The Flying Scotsman café we went to on one of our first days. We ended up at our same table, with the same wait staff who drew us little happy bunnies on our receipts and napkins. If you’re in Akiba and want somewhere to chill, I can’t recommend this place enough. They’re lovely. We walked past the massive JR Akihabara Station and Atré building, and saw the walls plastered with images for the 30th Anniversary of AQUAPLUS! The ToHeart2 visual novel and anime were oddly one of those series that Clara and I first bonded over, to the point where our combined domain is named for a character from it. They had merchandise in one of the small halls upstairs, though they were already sold out of the characters we knew! People of discerning tastes had been through before, it seems. While we were there, we also checked out the IDOLM@STER Official Store, because that’s also what people of discerning tastes do! IM@S was the first of these idol groups I ever knew, and while the lineup has been updated and changed a lot over the years, they still had a small shelf of the original characters I used to listen way back when; including my beloved Yukiho Hagiwara! Atré should have called this the Nostalgia Floor. We went hunting around a few more of the anime shops down the road, including the other Lashinbang, Mandarake, and BOOK·OFF stores we didn’t get time to before. These second-hand stores are absolutely packed with every series, character, and type of merchandise you can imagine. If teenage me had the money and access, he would have gone absolutely nuts in places like this. Fortunately Clara and I are far more responsible and rational and financially prudent and… oh no, how will this all fit in our bags? We also made the mistake of going to both HARD·OFF second-hand stores in Akiba. Their outlets elsewhere in Japan are definitely better on account of tourists generally not venturing out from the big cities, but they still had items that I would have loved to stuff in my bags had we the space for them. I also managed to snag a couple of PC-133 DIMMs which most of my desktops use, but are becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth. For a part of Tōkyō we were only going to “quickly” check out “in the morning” before going to Kinshichō, we ended up staying there till the late afternoon. Akihabara is a classic time void; I blame Makise Kurisu among others. We got the JR Chūō-Sōbu Line from Akihabara over to Kinshichō station in Subida, in the eastern part of Tōkyō. We left the station and were greeted with a familiar sight in the distance! I know the Skytree is a polarising piece of architecture, but there’s no doubt it’s… omnipresent, especially on a clear day like this! It seemed like it was popping up everywhere we walked. Clara was able to find the stores she was after for her friends, then we went to get some dinner. We ended up at this Chinese/Japanese restaurant where I was able to tick off having gyoza and omurice in the one meal… though the flavours were decidedly not Japanese! It was amazing, and a silly opportunity to use the Art mode on my OM-3 to take a picture of it outside as we left. Our flight isn’t until late tomorrow, so our plan is to wander around Ikebukuro after we check out, and to pretend that we somehow have another two weeks! One can dream, desu. By Ruben Schade in Tokyo, 2025-05-08.

There are five things I love about being a traveller in Japan. Okay, there are many more, but these are the big ones. One is the traditional art, music, and architecture. Two is the food, both local and their interpretations of international cuisine. Three is the hospitality. Four is its pop culture. And five, perhaps slightly higher than all but the first reason, is its urban design and public transport. Japan may no longer boast the fastest trains in the world—for now!—but their network remains my favourite. It can be confusing at times, but its fast, clean, efficient, and makes every other form of transit feel the opposite. Clara and I have taken the original Tokaido Shinaksen from Tōkyō to Nagoya, Kyōto, and Ōsaka before on previous trips like most tourists, but this was the first time on a different one which made me unreasonably excited! The Hokuriku opened in 1997, and travels between Tsuruga and Takasaki. Through services also use trackage for the Jōetsu and Tōhoku lines before arriving in Tōkyō. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Yesterday morning we said goodbye to Takaoka, our unintentional home base in Toyama Prefecture and a lovely place in its own right that I’d love to explore again, then took the now-familiar Ainokaze Line to Toyama Station. We realised after we bought the Shinkansen tickets that the line actually does stop in Shin-Takaoka, but would have required us to walk a kilometre and a half with our bags, or take the infrequent JR Jōhana Line. We arrived in Toyama and set up shop in a famed Seattle coffee chain establishment on the basis they were close, sell something resembling coffee, and had comfortable chairs where we could relax and read while we waited. We also took the opportunity to buy some ekiben, or literally train bento, from one of the dozens of stores next door. The Hokuriku does offer refreshments, but we figured it was best to be prepared. As I said, we’d never been on this Shinkansen line before, and I’d never seen an E7 Series train before. It slid gracefully and effortlessly into the station, and all my childhood joy about futuristic trains flooded back to me. This is an E7! And it’s here! Whaaaaa!! The E7/W7 series Shinkansen trains were first built in 2014, and lack the pronounced “duck bill” of later N700-derived trains operating on the Tokaido and other lines. I happen to think their design and colour scheme are the most beautiful of any Shinkansen ever made. They look, if you’ll pardon the French I used on Mastodon, classy as fuck. We hurried onboard the Green Car in carriage 11, and sank into the comfortable chairs. The interiors of the E7 are darker with more beige tones than the N700x series, which makes them feel even more relaxing. Of course the seats were gigantic, they had legroom for days, and came with generous tray tables, power charging sockets, reading lights, and retractable shades for the humongous windows. And these weren’t even the best seats in the house! Even if the Shinkansen was slower, I’d still prefer this form of transport over air travel. We settled in for the two and a half hour trip from Toyama to Tōkyō, and watched the scenery unfold. If you’ve ever watched Jeb Brooks before, he talks about the change in mindset that comes when you’re in a comfortable seat on a long train journey, and this absolutely happened here. There is no more relaxing way to travel. The Hokuriku line took us along the Sea of Japan coast with its neat little towns and clear blue water. Much of the line is in tunnels, or on viaducts with barriers that didn’t impede our view, but the wide 35 mm equivalent prime lens on my OM-3 wasn’t the best for it. I guess the blur of the concrete gives you a sense of the speed we were travelling! As we turned inland, the sea views gave way to farms, rivers, and mountains. I could really get used to seeing this. We made a few stops along the way, allowing me to get this photo of an E7 Shinkansen from our E7 Shinkansen. They definitely give more narrow-body aircraft vibes instead of trains, even if with their flat sides. The windows almost look like a DC-8. I’ll admit, we were so relaxed that we may have dozed off by this point. When we awoke again, the endless urban landscape of Tōkyō had begun. I remember looking down and thinking wait, isn’t that a Tōkyō JR train? We pulled into Tōkyō station exactly on time on platform 22. We disembarked, and I couldn’t help but think it was the best Shinkansen trip we’d ever taken. The views were beautiful, the seats were comfortable, and the specific train was sleek and beautiful and aaaaa high-speed trains! I bowed my head and tipped my hat to the conductor, and he returned the gesture :). Then we realised something dangerous… we were in the central hub of the Shinkansen system for the whole country! It seemed every minute another high-speed train from some far-flung or local part of Japan was arriving, in all shapes, sizes, and colour schemes. Every time we tried to leave to get our subway train to the hotel, another would arrive. I’d be here all day if I described each one in detail, so instead here are the highlights: We left the station and wandered to the hotel, with an almost full SD card of 4k60 video of these majestic trains coming and going, and enough photos that I could potentially crash nginx trying to share them all. Japan, they have trains, and they’re fucking awesome. I’ll leave you here with the 0 kilometre point embedded in the platform, and a view of the station as dusk set in. All I can say is wow. By Ruben Schade in Tokyo, 2025-05-07.

David over at Forking Mad+ did one of those blog post challenges I thought looked like fun. Do you floss your teeth? Yes, several of them! An accident when I was a kid left me with crooked teeth and little choice. Tea, coffee, or water? That’d be great, thanks. Footwear preference? One on each foot (ideally). Favourite dessert? I’m more an umami person, but kuih seri muka, followed closely by cendol and New York cheesecake. You could probably make kuih with a layer of New York cheesecake. The first thing you do when you wake up? I get out of bed, put the kettle on, and hop into the shower. I charge my phone in the other room now so it’s not the first thing I see, and hopefully not the forth or fifth either. Age you’d like to stick at? My thirties have been infinitely better than my twenties, both for mental health and energy. I also feel it’s more socially acceptable at this age to say “gee wiz I’d love to party, but I have work in the morning”. So maybe my late thirties, which is where I’m at now. How many hats do you own? An insufficient number. I love flatcaps, even if they make me look silly. They sit low, so they don’t blow away in the wind. They have a brim for sun protection. And I get so much joy from tipping my hat at older people, who invariably smile at the gesture. Japan especially. Describe the last photo you took? It was the last photo on this morning’s Shin-Takaoka travel post. It’s of a small green local Japanese bus driving away in the middle of the night. I don’t even like buses, but that was a fun trip. Worst TV show? Big Bang Theory, though I haven’t watched TV for years, so there might be worse. That’s terrifying. In terms of anime, that would still go to Freezing. Like BBT, don’t even watch it as a gag. As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood? I wanted to earn enough that I could have two spare rooms: one so I could take my mum in and care for her (rest in peace now), and a dedicated lab for electronics and computers, which we now have. Pretty lucky. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-05-06.