Day 1 of our Japan Travel: Ueno Park, Tokyo University, Tokyo Station

Japan is one of our dream countries to visit and we are so happy that we were able to see this beautiful country for the first time this year.

I booked our airfare last March via Cebu Pacific. Some get their Visas first before doing this but I got excited and forgot about the visas and just remembered it after paying ???? I chose autumn season because I love the colour and weather. I checked the foliage season and decided to go on December (thinking we might see some snow too if there will be around the area already at that time). I applied for our Visas last October 1 at Reli tours in SM Southmall and received the approved visas 4 days after. Yahoo!!!!

For the requirements, you can check it out here – https://www.ph.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/00_000035.html

I recommend Reli tours Southmall since their staff are helpful and they offer cheaper rates compared to others.

This was our 3rd time to go out of the country but the first time to be just the 3 of us. I did all our itineraries. I watched vlogs and read stories from Japan for Dummies group in Facebook to know what to expect.

I heard that stairs at train stations are common and it would be hard if you are travelling with big luggages so I decided to just bring a few clothes to hand carry and just buy there.

We stayed in Ueno Tokyo. I booked our first night at Ueno First City Hotel . My initial plan was to book Skyliner train tickets from Narita airport to Ueno station (no transfer). But I changed my mind when I realized that it’s a scheduled ticket and since nangangapa kami where to go, I thought baka di kami makarating sa platform at the scheduled time. So I booked another route. And that’s why we lost Ren’s backpack where his Samsung tablet and phone chargers are in. We just realized it when we were at our last stop and about to go out the train station. We reported it to all the train lines the next day and even at the police station. We were hopeful that it will be surrendered if found by Japanese people, but we forgot that there are also a lot of tourists in the country. So, after spending 5 days in Tokyo, it was not found.

We spent day1 strolling at Ueno park. Sobrang ginaw na ginaw kami at tuwang tuwa noong nasikatan ng araw ????.

We then walked to Tokyo University to see Hachiko and professor Ueno.

Then we walked to Tokyo Dome to have a picture outside wearing my Taylor Swift tshirt. Yup, this is the place where she will have her Eras tour next year.

After that we rode a train to Tokyo station. My plan was to see golden ginkgo trees lined up in front of the station and buy some ekiben with Shinkansen box. But we did not see any and because this is a busy station ang daming tao and ayaw namin ng madaming tao. Kaya di na kami nag ikot masyado.

I saw a police station inside noong palabas na kami so I decided to take the opportunity to report Ren’s lost bag. They were very helpful naman and even with some language barrier, we managed to understand each other. They called all the train lines we rode on but unfortunately, there’s no reported lost bag yet. They took the details of our hotel and told us that they will call in case they find it. Since Ren was so anxious, we decided to go back to the stations to show him that we did everything we could do. We did not push through with the rest of activities in our itinerary. We were supposed to explore Akihabara this day and take a photo shoot with the Tokyo Tower as background. But we made sure to buy some jackets, gloves and beanies at GU since we were traveling to Mt.Fuji area on day 2 and we thought it’s colder there. Stay tuned for our day 2 next.

UPDATE: DAY 2 story HERE