Ginza, Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Bay

It was time to pack up and leave our accommodation in Asakusa, and we headed over to the 7 Eleven across the road to grab some breakfast.  I loved the smoothie cups that you could grab from the freezer. Once you pay for it, you then scan the bar code at the smoothie machine, and it opens up and you can blend it in the store.                                      

                                           

                                          

We caught the train to Tokyo Tower and enjoyed walking around the area before going up to have a look at the city from above.  

                                           

                                          

                                  

                                             

                                             

                                             

It was fun to see people driving the Mario Karts around the tower. 

The view from the top of the tower wasn't as impressive as Skytree tower, but it was still fun to go up. 

                                   

                                             

There are shops at the bottom of the tower, so we grabbed some ramen before jumping on another train to Ginza. 

                                           

There is some amazing architecture in the area.  Ginza is known as the upmarket shopping district with lots of designer shops.  

                                

Harri in particular was very excited to see the sports cars in the Nissan showroom.

                               

After looking at the flagship Uniqlo store we jumped on another train to go to Tokyo Bay which is the Disney area.  I've been to Disneyland in LA a few times as a teenager and often have dreams about Disneyland and the dream is always the same - that I'm running out of time to go on all the rides.  I've always wanted to take the boys to Disneyland, so I was excited to finish off our trip to Japan by going to Disneyland and DisneySea.  

We got off at Maihama station and then bought three-day tickets for the Tokyo Disney Resort line which just constantly does loops around Disneyland and DisneySea and is how you can get to the Disney hotels. The Disney trains are so cute with Mickey shaped windows and play Disney music the whole time. It was very exciting to see the castle in Disneyland for the first time. 

                                           

There are so many impressive hotels around the Tokyo Bay area and the Disneyland Hotel was so beautiful. 

After lots of research I decided on staying at the Hilton Tokyo Bay. It had rooms that were big enough for us to have a bed each and it had a convenience store inside the hotel, so I knew that it would make our mornings easier if we could easily grab food for breakfast (as there was no way I was paying $40 each for the buffet breakfast after spending so much on the cost of the room already).  We could also just walk across the road to catch the train to Disneyland or DisneySea.  

Our hotel was right next to the Toy Story Hotel which is so cute and has lots of Toy Story theming inside and outside of the hotel.  Unfortunately, you can only go into the grounds or in the hotel if you are staying there, and they have staff at the gates to check that you are a guest before they'll even let you walk in there. 

We were relieved that our luggage had arrived and was waiting for us and were very happy with our room. It was actually the biggest room that we'd had our whole trip. We had a beautiful view of Tokyo Bay from our window, and I made a comment to the boys, that I'd read on the reviews that some rooms had a view of Mt Fuji, but we obviously didn't.  I was pleasantly surprised the next morning, when we opened up the window screens as Mt Fuji was right across the bay! There was too much haze when we arrived, to see it. 

There were a few cute little things in the room to make it feel like Disney, even though it's not an official Disney hotel. 

We had a quick look around the hotel and realised there were actually two convenience stores inside and also a Disney store. 

We have a lot of funny stories from our trip that we often have a laugh about and one of them was on this day, we were rushing to get on the train. Jalen was always so much faster than the rest of us, and I always held back a bit with Harri who was struggling to walk at times because of his sore leg.  Jalen jumped onto the train that just pulled up at the station and Kobe went to jump on as well and the door shut right on his toes.  He wasn't able to get on the train and Jalen was the only one who made it on, and the train took off with the three of us still standing at the station. I was yelling at Jay through the train window to get off at the next station and that we would meet him there, Kobe was in agony because of his toes (which I was worried were broken because he could also hardly walk after it!) and Harri was cracking up laughing at the hilarity of it all. 

When we got to the hotel Kobe was so happy to finally be able to rest his sore toes.  I didn't want to waste any time and knew that we only had a couple of days left, so I asked the boys if they wanted to get a night ticket to go to DisneySea.  

Harri said he wanted to rest his leg and not walk around all night (but he actually just jumped on the Disney line train and did a few laps and checked things in the area out) and Kobe's toes were so sore that he said he couldn't walk either. He said he didn't want to have FOMO because he knew we would have fun, but I told him we would just go and mostly have a walk around and check it out, so that we knew what we wanted to prioritise when we all had the whole day there together. Kobe was happy with that and was also okay about staying in the hotel room because the Hobart Hurricanes were playing in the Big Bash cricket final and he was keen to watch that.

So, we left the boys to get food from the convenience store for dinner and Jay and I went to DisneySea for a few hours. 

DisneySea isn't actually owned by Disney, and it doesn't feel at all like a Disney park. Everything is sea based, and it is huge and separated into different areas of the world. It actually takes about 20 minutes to walk quickly from one end of the park to the other. 

It was absolutely beautiful when we walked in as it was dark and everything was lit up.  We no longer felt like we were in Japan and just felt like we were walking around different parts of the world. The Mediterranean Harbour area was beautiful. 

                               
                                           
                                 

When we checked the app the gondola rides were only a 20-minute wait, so we decided to go on. 

                                          

We have no idea what the cast member was saying, but we loved it. It really felt like you were in Italy. 

We walked around different areas of the park to just check out what rides we wanted to prioritise when we all went together.  

We also went to the turtle talk show which is the turtle from Finding Nemo. We knew it would be in Japanese, but didn't realise it would go on for so long.  We had no clue what was going on, but it got a lot of laughs. 

The carousel in the Arabian Coast section looked so beautiful lit up at night and I was excited to go back and ride it with the boys.  You're never too old for a carousel! Unfortunately, when we all went together it was closed, so we didn't get to go on.  

The Toy Story Mania section i the American Waterfront area was so popular and always had a huge line up.  

We only stayed for about two and a half hours and were ready to go back to our hotel to rest. We caught the train back and spotted the Outback Steakhouse (which we don't have in Australia) and the huge Disney Store at the train station. 

Our hotel had nighties for everyone, and Jay was the only one who was brave enough to try it on. He cracks me up. 

                                        

Most mornings we didn't race out the door because things were closed until 10 am but I told the boys that we were on a time frame in the morning as we were going to Disneyland and we had to get there early, so we could get in the gates early to get fast passes on the app.  I didn't want to waste our day at Disneyland waiting in too many lines all day. 

                                       

Above Harri's bed was a mirror which lit up and played music when you pressed the button. I told him I was going to press it as his alarm in the morning.  I couldn't wait for the morning, so we could finally go to Disneyland together.