pre-TOKYO [PART 3]: Planned itinerary

-continued from part 2-

Finally, here is my planned itinerary for my trip to Tokyo! Too many places to go and too many food to eat!! :D

Day 1: 

• Fly to Haneda Airport by Singapore Airlines
• Take limousine bus to Grand Pacific Le Daiba from Haneda Airport

• Check-in Grand Pacific Le Daiba

Day 2:

• Shop in Odaiba

1. Aquacity Odaiba

2. Lunch at King of the Pirates

3. DiverCity Tokyo

4. Leisureland

Day 3:

• Take shuttle bus to Disneyland

• Have fun in Disneyland

• Check-in Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay

Day 4:

• Play at Disneysea

• Dinner at Magellan

Day 5:

• Go to Disneysea

• Go to Disneyland

• Dinner at Crystal Palace

Day 6:

• Travel to Odaiba

1. Decks Tokyo Beach

2. Palette Town

3. Oedo Onsen Monogatari

• Check-in Grand Pacific Le Daiba

Day 7:

• Head to Shibuya and walk around Shibuya

• Lunch at Maidreamin's Digitized Cafe and Dining Bar

• Check-in airbnb apartment

• Explore Ginza

• Dinner at Vampire Café

Day 8:

• Travel to Asakusa

• Walk around Sensoji

• Go to Akihabara

1. Breakfast at Gundam Café

2. SEGA

3. Yodobashi Akiba

4. Lunch at Eorzea Café

• Head back to Shibuya

1. Tokyu Hands

2. Dinner at The Lockup

Day 9:

• Visit Harajuku

1. Kiddyland

2. Takeshita Street

3. Lunch at Kawaii Monster Café

Day 10:

• Travel to Doraemon Museum

• Head to Ikekuburo

1. Sunshine City

2. J-World Tokyo

3. Namja Town

• Dinner at Swallowtail Café

Day 11:

• See Wisteria in Ashikaga Flower Park

Day 12:

• Go to Ghibli Museum

• Head to Shinjuku

1. Shinjuku Gyoen

2. Dinner at Sengoku Buyuden

Day 13:

• Breakfast at Daiwa Sushi @ Tsujiki Market

• Travel to Nikko

1. Shinkyo Bridge

2. Rinnoji

3. Toshogu Shrine

• Check-in Okunoin Hotel Tokugawa

Day 14:

• Explore Nikko

Day 15:

• Travel and shop at Tokyo Skytree

• Head back to Shibuya

Day 16:

• Go to Harajuku

1. Yoyogi Park

2. Meiji Shrine

• Head to Narita Airport

pre-TOKYO [PART 2]: Other reservations

-continued from previous post-

Other reservations made in advance
For attractions:
DisneySea & DisneyLand 3 day passport
I created a Disneyland account in their Japanese site in order to be able to make online reservations for the restaurants in Disneyland/sea. However, you can create an account in their English site for ease of use. Just click on 'Reservations/Purchase' and you will be able to purchase your tickets! Note that the account created can only be used in the site it is created in i.e. account created in Japanese site can only be used to log in the Japanese site and the same goes for the English site.

For the 3 day pass, you need to choose the resort you wish to visit on the 1st and 2nd day. On the 3rd day, you can visit both resorts.
E.g. 1st day: Disneyland, 2nd day: Disneysea, 3rd day: no selection needed (you can visit both).

A good site to use to know more about planning for your Disneyland/sea trip is THIS.
To find out how crowded the resort will be, you can use THIS. It is in Japanese, just use google translate to get the gist of it. But these are the colour codes on the estimated amount of people that will be visiting the theme parks.

Price: 16,600 yen for 3-day magic passport 

Ghibli Museum 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館 & Doraemon Museum 藤子・F・不二雄ミュージアム
Tickets to both Ghibli Museum and  Doraemon Museum can only be bought in the Lawsons' stores using the Loppi machine. You can however check on the tickets availability online to see if there are still available tickets. You can't buy online using these sites as you need to be able to collect the tickets from Lawson within a certain number of days from your online purchase. Hence, if you book in advance, your reservations will still be voided if you don't collect the tickets from Lawson.

For Ghibli Museum, click >>here<<

To check availability, click on dark brown button.

For Doraemon Museum, click >>here<<

To check availability, click on the yellow/orange button of the month you wish to visit.

For my visit in April, the more popular museum is Ghibli Museum. Tickets were selling out waaaay too fast! Doraemon Museum still had many available slots. However, I just requested my kind Airbnb host to purchase both tickets for me!! Lucky me! :D A lot of thanks and appreciation to my host!!! ♥♥

Price: 1,000 yen for each museum for 1 adult

For restaurants:
Magellan @ DisneySea & Crystal Palace @ DisneyLand
As mentioned, I had created an account in Disney's Japanese site in order for me to reserve Disney's restaurants.

Magellan is a fine dining restaurant in Disneysea, you can read the review >>here<< They rated this restaurant as the best Disney restaurant, so I definitely have to try right? :P

For Crystal Palace, it is a buffet restaurant. The review is >>here<< Sounds nice too right?

I have booked both restaurants for dinner though, so it might be more expensive.. Hopefully they are as good as they had been reviewed!

Maidreamin's Digitized Café  and Dining Bar
There are several Maidreamin shops in Tokyo but I planned to visit this special-themed maid café under them. The shop's details >>here<< I just filled in the details and submitted my request. I have yet to receive any confirmation from them. I guess I will know if they had accepted my reservation once I'm there.

There is a surcharge of 500 yen per hour and each person 1 is required to order 1 main course.

Eorzea Café 
Eorzea café can be visited without making a reservation online. However, the best way to ensure you can get a seat in a themed restaurant is making a reservation. This cafe receives bookings in fixed time slots. These are the 4 time slots each day.

Booking online with a charge of 1,000 yen entitles you to one drink and receiving a free drink coaster. However, this online booking belongs to Lawson as well. Hence, you need to collect your ticket from Lawson within a certain number of days after reserving online. I will either be getting my host to buy once the date I want is released or purchase the tickets when I am in Japan.

Update: I have unfortunately been unable to book the day and time I want! So unless we managed to get time slot from the cafe when we are there, we won't be able to to eat here! >.<

Swallowtail café 
This is a butler cafe!! KYYYAAA! >.< Reservations are accepted up to 2 weeks in advance! Will book once the date I want is available! :D

The Lockup ロックアップ 渋谷店

The Lockup is a haunted prison-themed restaurant. They have various outlets in Japan. Even though I am not a fan of any horror-related things, it looks interesting so we decided to go there. My friend is okay with these kind of things though.. Besides, we are just there to eat right?? Can't be that scary right?? *convinces myself that it will be okay*

Anyways, I made my reservation >>here<< I have received an email confirmation from the restaurant on my reservation.
--------------------------

The 3 restaurants listed below belong to Diamond Dining, the same company as the Alice restaurant I visited in Osaka last year. Last year, I had created an account with Diamond Dining and now I can make my reservations online for any restaurants under this company.

Vampire Café ダイヤモンドダイニングが
Vampire cafe, as the name suggests, is a Vampire-themed cafe. Hopefully the food taste as nice as the decorations I see online!

Sengoku Buyuden  乱世の個室 戦国武勇伝
Official site >>here<< As quoted from a site, it is themed of "Japanese history during segoku period (age of civil wars, around 1550-1600)". Not that I really know anything about Japanese history, but the pictures looks cool and the review mentioned that the food is good! So I shall try it out!

Kawaii Monster Café 
Last but not least Kawaii Monster Cafe! I just happened to see this cafe in the reservation page and wondered what this shop is all about. This store's concept seems to play around with loud and bright colours. Seems interesting!
--------------------------
Others:
Disney bus from Grand Pacific Le Daiba
This link is only for guests who are staying with Grand Pacific Le Daiba only. To book, click >>here<<

To see if your hotel provides shuttle bus, you may click >>here<<
To compare the benefits that the hotels have, click >>here<<

DOCOMO SIM card

Initially I had wanted to rent a portable wifi device for the first few days in Disneyland as we will only get a portable wifi when we check in our airbnb apartment in the later part of our trip (see itinerary). However, my friend recommended me to buy a data SIM card instead and when I compared the prices, buying the SIM card is a cheaper option.

I purchased from simjapan where they sell 7 days or 15 days SIM card. They also offer a 'Big data' option for people who uses more data. I bought my 15 days big data (3GB) micro SIM card for S$58 after including a S$1 delivery charge. We will enjoy 200MB of data each day! This should be more than enough for the 2 of us. Furthermore, when we are in the hotel room, we can switch to using the hotel's wifi.

Price: SGD 58

-Continue to part 3 for my planned itinerary-

pre-TOKYO [PART 1]: Flight & Accommodations

I'm still alive by the way! Just busy and no com at home to use!

My friend and I are going to visit Tokyo in April!! We are going for 16D15N! Wohoo~ You can never have enough days to spend when you go Japan!

Flight
We are flying Singapore Airlines to Tokyo! First time taking our National Airline! SQ had a promotion and we bought our direct flight to Tokyo end July 2015 at S$635 each! :D SQ comes with 30kg of check-in luggage as well as 7kg carry on luggage! YEAH! TIME TO SHOP! :D

Our flight timings:
Singapore to Tokyo Haneda Airport: 1.55pm to 9.50pm
Tokyo Narita Airport to Singapore: 8.50pm to 3am

So, finally, not a midnight flight to another country, but by the time we check-in to the hotel and get ready for sleep, it is still gonna be quite late. The return flight is midnight though, and we will arrive in Singapore at an ungodly hour of 3am >.<

Accommodations
We will be staying in 2 hotels first before staying in an Airbnb apartment in Shibuya. We will also be staying 2 nights in a ryokan in Nikko!

Grand Pacific Le Daiba
Details of hotel >>here<<

Room Type: Superior Twin Non-Smoking
Period of stay: Mid Apr 2016. Purchased from Agoda in Sep 2015.

Price: S$780.38 for 3 nights (for 2 pax) 

Check-in & Check-out time: 3pm/12pm
Address: 2-6-1 Daiba, Minato, Tokyo 135-8701, Japan

Extra: In room Wifi, safety deposit box, bathtub & shower, bathrobe & slipper, hair dryer

Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay 
Details of hotel >>here<<

Room Type: Ocean Dream Room Non-Smoking
Period of stay: Mid Apr 2016. Purchased from Sheraton in Nov 2015.

Price: JPY 69,600 for 3 nights (for 2 pax) 

Check-in & Check-out time: 3pm/12pm
Address: 1-9 Urayasu, Chiba, 浦安市パークシティ, 2 Chome-39-2 Maihama, Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture 279-0031, Japan

Extra: Balcony, in room Wifi, in room coffee maker, safety deposit box, bathtub & shower, bathrobe & slipper, hair dryer

Airbnb @ Shibuya
Details of the apartment >>here<< 
Apparently the host has taken down her apartment from airbnb but if she ever rent out rooms again this is the host >>here<<

Period of stay: Mid Apr 2016.

Price: S$1,190 for 9 nights (2 pax). Purchased in Aug 2015.

Check-in & Check-out time: 3pm/10am
Getting there: Walking distance from Shibuya Station

Extra: Portable & room wifi, washing machine, fridge, hair dryer, bathtub & shower

Not an Airbnb member yet? Join Airbnb with my referral >>here<< to get travel credits! We can get credits when either of us book a stay using Airbnb!

Okunoin Hotel Tokugawa
Details of the ryokan >>here<<

Room Type: Ginryu Japanese Style Room Open-Air Bath Half Board
Period of stay: Mid Apr 2016. 

Price: S$1,404.14 for 2 nights (2 pax). Purchased from Agoda in Nov 2015.

Check-in & Check-out time: 3pm/11am
Address: Japan, 〒321-1415, 栃木県日光市 2204

Extra: In room and public onsen, wifi, shuttle bus service, Japanese meals etc

-Go to Part 2 here-