Rachel's Next Adventure

I've finally had a day off with a little bit of free time to get the planning started for our upcoming trip to Japan. It's in no way officially set at the minute, I think we're going to change the JR pass dates we've put in at the minute to try and move Hiroshima and Kyoto to week days. Today I finally managed to get our hotel booked for our final night - we'll be staying at the Hotel Sunny in Nippori again. We were going to book a hotel by the airport but taking the shuttle bus with three cases seemed a bit difficult so we decided just to stick with Hotel Sunny and the Keisei Skyliner, even if it does mean getting up ridiculously early in the morning. We're looking at booking the Granvia Hiroshima, Kyoto and Osaka for our JR days, last time we got the pass we just booked the Hiroshima hotel and travelled to/from there every day - because to be honest I hadn't realised there was a Granvia in Kyoto and Osaka station too! So I think it'd make...

We didn't manage to visit the Skytree until our second trip and don't really have any plans to return - even though the cornflakes topped with milk icecream they sold within the tower was absolutely amazing. We aim to visit Tokyo Tower this time round, which is another that has been on our list since our first trip but we've not managed to get to yet! I definitely felt bad for the locals here, as a visitor we got special fast entry tickets, the standard queue looked insane!

Another attraction close to our hotel, Sunshine Aquarium is located within Sunshine City shopping centre. The queue to get in here was so so so long! I don't think we'll go back here unless we have a day of really bad and rainy weather but it was an interesting way to spend a few hours in Ikebukuro.

The single most cutest place on the planet. Sanrio Puroland! We spent a day here on our second trip to Japan, even the train station - Tama-Center - is all decorated with Hello Kitty and her friends. The station's name reminds me of TamaTown, the old Tamagotchi website. I want to visit this place again, everything was super cute, right down to the themed foods. And the Halloween shows were adorable so i'd love to see some summer shows!

We saw this show the first time we visited, we didn't the second time as the queues are LONG! but, I believe Gelatoni has now been added into the show so you know that is definitely worth the hour long queue for counter service food!

The last two times we've visited Tokyo Disney Resort the main parade has been Happiness is here. This year is Tokyo Disneyland's 35th anniversary and they'll have a brand new parade! I'll miss Happiness is here but I can't wait to see the new parade in August!

Not going to lie, this is one of the shops we visit most while we're in Tokyo. That could be because its so close to our hotel and we tend to visit Sunshine City or the general area its in pretty often, especially at night when we hit up the Sega Arcade. The stock in the Pokemon Mega Center is constantly changing - in the two weeks we visited back in 2016 the stock changed two or three times. We saw Halloween get rolled out, Pokémon 20th Anniversary Promo and the original cards get released. The store had changed quite a bit since our 2015 trip, it had taken over some space outside too and added in the Pokémon arcade games and some coin press machines. When we were checking out the arcade machines we felt our first earthquake of the 2016 trip!

Last time we visited Tokyo the 1:1 scale Gundam in Odaiba was the RX-78-2, they dismantled and removed it back in March last year and in September it was replaced with the Rx=0 Unicorn Gundam, so we really can't wait to see it! Here is the day time and night time show from the RX-78-2 we shot back in 2016. If you're not interested in seeing the lifesize Gundam its still a good idea to take a trip to Odaiba, its full of hang out spots, a theme park - Palette Town - and plenty of shops including Vans, Tiger and a pet shop that stocks the Neko Atsume and Disney brand cat toys!

Today's Japan post features our Ueno Zoo videos from 2015 and 2016. I don't know if we'll have time to head back here this year, and to be honest it didn't seem as good the second visit, but there is so much to explore in the parks and temples on the walk to the zoo so we'll probably head over to Ueno at some point. 2015 video 2016 video

Ok, so we booked up a little while ago but i've really not posted very much on this blog recently, so here is our official announcement We're going back to JAPAN! We've booked back up for the summer since September's weather wasn't as good, we're booked back up in our usual Tokyo base hotel - the Sakura Hotel in Ikebukuro, you can see the room tour from our first trip in 2015 below. We're going for just over two weeks and theres so much we want to do this time round! We haven't really started planning yet so for the next few days/weeks i'll post up here some videos from our previous two trips to give anyone else who wants to go an idea of what fun things are available in Japan. Hope you enjoy, keep checking back for more posts, we'll be starting our proper planning and updates soon!

Back in September we stayed at Walt Disney World's Port Orleans Riverside Resort, here is a video of our room. The hotel rooms were nice and big, the hotel definitely went out of their way to look after us during Hurricane Irma - we were given a torch, instructions and the movie channel and arcade were both switched to free play whilst the parks were closed. The restaurants were only closed for one meal period the entire time the parks were closed. There were warning signs about alligators everywhere, it made me feel a little uneasy but we didn't see any - the most alligator like thing we came across was this little guy that snook into our spare bed!