Oniisanbomber's Blog

Japan Trip – March 2025 – Part 1 (Tokyo)

11th of May, 2025

I’ve done a total of eight Japan trips in my life. I’ve seen more of Japan than I have of my own home country, and yet I’ve never written a detailed log of what I did during every trip. I was content to let the memories simmer and slowly fade, with some bright spots searing themselves into my mind.

But this time, the trip was truly special. So I wanted to write it down. And maybe you, whoever is reading this, will get some enjoyment out of it too.

Anyway, let’s go.

I arrived in the afternoon local time. Around 4 pm or so. Haneda International Airport.

And this is where the trouble started.

Japan’s immigration system is truly a mess.

Other Asian countries have streamlined their immigration process, but Japan refuses to budge.

When you arrive, you first need to fill out an Arrival Card, which includes your passport information, hotel address, etc. Okay, very normal.

Then, after that, they require you to register online by scanning a QR code.

The problem is that not all tourists arrive in Japan with SIM cards ready to connect to the Internet the moment they get off the plane. Another problem is that the airport WiFi isn’t available in all the areas the immigration line snakes to. So while you are standing in line filling out both the Arrival Card and the online immigration form, your phone might lose Internet connection.

The online QR code website requires you to fill out pretty much the exact same information that the Arrival Card requires. It’s maddening.

Before you get to the immigration counter, you go to a station where they take your fingerprints. Then from there, you join a second line that leads to the immigration counter.

Lots of other airports in other Asian countries simply combine the fingerprint station and the immigration counter.

The immigration counter is pretty standard, and once you’re through there, you have to fill out a separate customs form and give it to a customs officer. The customs forms, again, contain pretty much the same information you filled out two times already.

Again, every other country has combined all of these forms.

Now, I understand why Japan does it like this.

By breaking up the immigration process into so many tiny pieces, each employee at each stage is only responsible for the tiny bit they have to do, and therefore does not have to take responsibility if another part gets messed up. My friends working in Japan tell me about all sorts of ways employees escape individual responsibility and make sure the entire group is to blame.

There is another reason.

Each of the stations and parts of the immigration process is tied to a different department in the immigration Ministry. Each of those departments has a vested interest in defending its turf and does not want to see any change to the immigration system, lest it lose influence.

It’s office politics.

But right after I got through immigration, that’s when the Japan trip started to look up.

Haneda has lots of connections to the city. You can take the train, but those are just normal subway trains with nowhere for you to put your heavy luggage.

I recommend you take one of the many shuttle limousine buses to the city. They cost about the same as the train and drop you off at the location where you need to be. After a long flight, you don’t need to drag your luggage through the subway system. Instead, someone loads it onto the shuttle bus and off you go. You can enjoy the sights of the city from the comfortable seat of the bus.

Another plus is that most people take the train, so the shuttle bus is quite empty (at least when I was there). There were only a few people on the bus with me, and I was on the bus going to Shinjuku, arguably the busiest area in Tokyo.

My hotel was one of the APA hotels at the edge of the Kabukicho red light district.

I thought the hotel had a nice bath, so I booked it. It wasn’t until later that I found out that Kabukicho is a red light district.

Please do note that APA is a HUGE chain in Japan. They have 5-6 different APA hotels on the SAME street alone, and they all look identical. So be sure to write down the exact address of the hotel.

By the time I arrived at my hotel, I hadn’t eaten in over six hours. Immediately, I drop off my luggage and go outside to hunt for food.

I ended up at a random restaurant and had fried pork with rice. It was about 3500 yen and really not worth it. There are much better deals to be had.

I began to explore the area at night and was struck by how many host clubs there are in the area.

All of these guys in the advertisements are the top hosts of their respective clubs, which means they have the highest amount of sales. All of these guys are heavily photoshopped and wear a lot of make-up. They essentially fulfill the fantasy of Japanese women. To be honest, these images creep me out a bit, but they do look like the fantasy they are selling.

I even recognize one of the host clubs (Dolce) from a YouTube video I saw before.

After getting a night of sleep, it was time to explore Tokyo in earnest. It had been eight years since I was last in Tokyo. Most of my Japan trips skip Tokyo altogether because of the insanely high cost (the hotel is 25,000 yen a night, which is about 1800 Norwegian Krone).

I had been to Tokyo three times before, so I skipped all of the usual tourist sites (Meiji temple, Asakusa, Oshiage Sky Tree and so on) and dove headfirst into Akihabara.

Below, you can see my purchases.

You can truly find some good deals there, and they will all sell at a profit on eBay.

While exploring Akihabara, I also found out that most of the merchandise they sell is from the past, older franchises. It seems that none of the newest stuff sells. They are even bringing out new figurines of Holo the Wisewolf and Tenshi from Angel Beats. All of the Yu-Gi-Oh! ads feature Yugi and Kaiba. None of the new and even GX, and 5Ds characters are relevant.

It feels like the anime industry is going back to the nostalgic well and milking that for money, while none of the newer IP has any staying power. It feels like what is happening to Disney, just at a slower pace.

(More on that in a future blog post.)

For the next couple of days, my plan was to go to Kamakura and Enoshima. But it was March, and out of nowhere, it started SNOWING! In the middle of March.

I met a friend in Tokyo, and he said it is crazy because it hasn’t snowed at all in the past winter. And suddenly, in March, it starts snowing. He said it usually never snows in March.

I had to get out the clothes I was going to wear in Hokkaido (future blog post detailing my Hokkaido journey is coming soon). In fact, it was colder in Tokyo than it was in Hokkaido (at least it felt like that).

It snowed and rained for three days straight.

In the end, I didn’t do any of the day trips to Kamakura and Enoshima because of the bad weather. I stayed in Tokyo and did a lot more shopping.

I also came across Okubo station on the East Chuo line (not to be confused with Shin Okubo station on the Yamanote Line).

I decided to make this an important place in the story I submitted to the Honeyfeed competition (I Met You Before the End of the World).

The quiet back streets and parking lots in the heart of Tokyo truly felt surreal. It was isolated from the busy streets, yet it was only one minute walk away.

In the same area, the quiet back streets lead to strange love hotels (you can pay with Visa, Mastercard, AliPay, WeChat Pay—love hotels are more up to date than the immigration system) and lonely parking lots attached to even quieter buildings.