My wife and I traveled to Tokyo for 10 days to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. We planned to be there mid-March in time for Sakura/Cherry blossom season. Unfortunately, injuries to both of us forced us to postpone. We re-booked the trip to late last year. We were there from late November until the 1st week of December. It turned out to be a better choice. Due to the climate change, the seasons were all out of whack. Cherry blossom season came very late and we would have missed it. Instead, we were in Tokyo during a time that should be winter. But it was actually peak autumn and early winter. We experienced really nice cold weather, ranging from 2C to 11C in Tokyo. It was much colder in the mountain areas. We still saw all the autumn colors in full bloom. At the same time, we got to experience light snow in the mountains.
It was a really chill 10 days for us. We had planned an itinerary but agreed to not hold on to it strictly. This was except for side trips where we booked and prepaid for train/bus tickets and hotel accommodation. We made the right choice of staying at Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku. It is a nice modern mid-priced hotel with the advantage of having the airport bus stopping at the hotel itself. It is quite central to all we need for a comfortable stay. Family Mart was a few meters away. There were lots of really good cafes and restaurants nearby. Shinjuku Station is one of Tokyo’s major transportation hubs. It was a mere 5 -10 minutes away. The time varies depending on how fast or slow you walk. Moving around Tokyo was very convenient with its comprehensive (albeit complicated) railways system. You can literally take the train to any part of Japan from Tokyo and vice versa. We used Google maps extensively. Nevertheless, be warned that in some subway stations, there is no GPS signal. You need to guess your way around.
Shinjuku is a very vibrant city known for its red light district, restaurants and entertainment areas. We arrive quite late the first day and was unable to actually see the city until it was night time. Shinjuku is bustling during the day, however, at night, when all the neon lights are on, you really see it come alive.
We got to visit Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa the next day. We were not as early as we should be. The temple grounds and Nakamise shopping street were packed with visitors. Nakamise is the most famous shopping street in Asakusa. The street runs for 250 meters on the main approach to Senso-ji Temple. After wandering around and seeing the sights, we went across the street to a building with an observation area. It allowed us to see Nakamise street from above. We also got a view of the famous landmark – Tokyo Skytree.
After visiting Asakusa, we made our way to Ueno and Ueno Park. It’s a nice park with lots of open grounds for children to play, people to picnic and chill. We also visited Kayaba Coffee. It is one of the coffee shops in my “must visit” coffee shop list. Along the way, we chanced upon several other nice cafes. Japan truly has a great coffee culture.
For this trip, I wanted to travel light with my photography gear. I simply took along my Fuji X100VI with the WCL and TCL conversion lenses as my only camera gear. I didn’t even bring along my laptop. Instead, I just brought my ancient 2018 iPad Pro 11″. I also took my iPhone 16 Pro. I am amazed at how great the Fuji X100VI is as a travel camera. It is light, compact and doesn’t get in the way. The conversion lens gave me the options of choosing between 28mm and 50mm (FF equivalent). Most of the time, I found the native 35mm (FF equivalent) was all I needed for urban photography. I shot everything using the Portra 400 film recipe from Fuji Weekly. I shot in RAW + jpg. I ended up simply using and keeping the jpgs for all photos. The only exceptions were the photos I took in and around Kawaguchiko for the Mt. Fuji shots. These were all edited from the RAW files. I did some minor tweaks with LR Classic and that was it.
I took close to 700 photos for this trip. The photos here are the ones I took during the 1st couple of days in Shinjuku, Asakusa, and Shibuya. I will share more of our trip in the succeeding blogs. You can click on each photo for the full version. Do give this a like, comment and share this to help promote my blog. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one. God bless.
Daniel's Lighthouse 