Sparks Fly in The Night
Winter Activities in Tokyo
Tokyo is an incredibly vibrant city. Apart from the many tourist attractions that draw millions of tourists every year, there are also seasonal and temporary attractions to visit if your schedule aligns.
While we were in Tokyo we managed to see the new Fantastic Beasts 2 movie and go to the special pop-up café for the Wizarding World. We found that the movie experience in Japan is mostly the same as America but there are a few distinct differences. At the Toho Cinema that we visited, the popcorn and drink comes on a tray that slides into the cupholder on the armrest of the chair. This turns the tray into a pivoting table! Amazing! The second difference was a merch store outside the theater — after seeing the movie you can buy stuff from the movie franchise. Yuki got a Wizarding World notepad.
The Wizarding World Café took an hour of lining up to get into and is part café, part merch shop. The food and drinks are all themed and tasted pretty good, though they are expensive.
We also visited the Yokohama Ramen museum which is essentially a ramen food court decorated to look like a post-war Japanese town.
We’ve been quite excited to visit the Ramen Museum since I first saw it on a TV show years ago. It was, however, kind of disappointing. We went with empty stomachs expecting to sample three of the eight shops but found out that the mini size (half size) was pretty much almost the same size as a typical ramen bowl at any restaurant. Each bowl also cost 500 yen, which, on top of the 300 admission, made for a very expensive lunch.
In my opinion, the ramen wasn’t all that special either. Sure, it was good and tasty — but it wasn’t particularly noteworthy. Although we didn’t try the most prestigious shop (which according to the brochure took over 100 meetings for its owner to be convinced about including his ramen in the musuem), the ramen we had was on par with pretty much any other ramen we’ve had in Japan. Therefore, there’s not really any point in going to the ramen museum for lunch if you’re constantly trying different ramen for dinner throughout your travels.
After the Ramen Museum we went to a Christmas market in Yokohama and stumbled upon some Christmas lights. It seems that most cities in Japan string Christmas lights up in parks; however, unlike in Canada where the lights are just hung up on a few trees or where you’re just relying on the light from lampposts, the Japanese go all-out. For example, an old drydock that is now a public space had been decorated with thousands of Christmas lights, hanging down the walls and converging into a heart in the middle.
In the Roppongi district of Tokyo, we found a garden that had beautiful Christmas lights strung over all of the bushes.
Beside that garden is a well-known street that is decorated in Christmas lights every year. The lights glow on and off every few minutes.
The best Christmas lights we saw in Tokyo are at the Midtown mall, where a field of lights is set up to change colors and patterns in a beautiful music show.
We spent a long time watching the lights. It’s possible to walk all the way around the square field, which gave us a different (and interesting) perspective from every side.
As if the lights and music weren’t enough, there was also a fog machine and bubble blower. For some unknown reason the fog and bubbles don’t come out with every repetition of the show, but with enough patience we were able to wait until they did.
Since we’re in Japan during the winter, it was important for us to find seasonal activities and festivals. In our research, we found that there is a popular Chichibu Night Festival that happens every year on December 2nd and 3rd. We invited Rey (our Swiftie friend who got Yuki her concert tickets) to join us for a night of watching large decorative parade floats as well as two and a half hours of fireworks.
Even though it was wintertime, there were lots of food vendors lining the streets and even more people out and about. The parade of floats was pretty cool to see because they’re all pulled by people from different groups.
We were excited for two and a half hours of fireworks, but it ended up being a few minutes of fireworks every 15–20 minutes. It wasn’t as spectacular as we had hoped for. On the other hand, it made me appreciate the annual festival of lights in Vancouver and look forward to seeing that again when we return.
Not withstanding the intermittent break between the fireworks, they were still nice to see and it was great to spend time with Rey and get to know her better.
