Hello, This is a follow-up to my itinerary check post from few weeks ago (link here)
I have brief summary below followed by day by day details.
Post may be split into multiple posts.
Summary: I want to thank the people here who gave good advice about luggage forwarding from the hotel; also linking to specific site for booking kawaguchiko train and also highlighting that my original time for universal studios was too little.
Also someone mentioned in itinerary thread that this is not peak travel season, dont know what they are talking about. It is absolutely peak season for both locals and tourists. I am sure there are other peak seasons in the year too for japan.
I traveled with my 10 year old daughter and wife. We are in our late 30s. Travel was between March 23 to March 31.

• I bought travel plan from local phone provider. Just one less hassle to deal with.
• Went with full intention to take public transit but ended up mostly taxi for within cities and shinkansen for long distance. JR pass for my purpose was not needed.
• Food was an issue for us as muslims. Found it tough to find the time travel to halal restaurants that offer japanese cuisine. Didnt travel to japan to eat turkish kebab or Indian curries lol so we skipped on those options. Vegan options are limited especially if you have to commute to these locations with a busy itinerary.
• Both my credit cards (visa and mc) worked fine. I took cash as well but didn’t need it as much as i thought i would.
• Power bank for phone was a life saver on more than one occasion. Highly recommend.
• Lines lines and more lines. Difficult to plan in advance for such things. Have to adapt and be ready to make tough decisions on what to skip like i did multiple times. First few days in Tokyo we werent having a good time due to lines and bad weather. Trip picked up afterwards around day 4.
• I will visit again with all the little things i have learned. So much more to explore.

Now I’ll go over each day and give my thoughts on the positive and negative experiences now that i actually executed what I had planned for many hours.
Day 1- - Flight landed at 530PM at Narita. Earlier than scheduled. But by the time i got to hotel in Shibuya it was 11PM…. Huge line-ups at airport at various points, from pre-checks to immigration to customs. I overheard one traveler just frustrated after being told by staff to go somewhere say “i have to wait in another line?!” - Finally after clearing all that we headed out of the terminal to book the narita express. Huge line-up at both the service center and the automated machines. I waited at the service center as line-up looked a bit shorter. Plus i figured people at the machines also take their time doodling around. Anyways, over an hour wait here but helpful. Lady in line front of me was complaining about the wait times at narita for everything. She had someone waiting also at the machines lineup. Also picked up my kawaguchiko reserved tickets and also got Welcome Suica starting with 2000 yen each for all of us. I think i caught like the 9ish train. - Arrived at Shibuya station which is huge. Before leaving train I overheard someone say that bus is the way to go from airport. I agree. Had to ask for directions to hotel as the signs were not clear. It was raining, windy and cold outside. Lots of construction around the station making the walking difficult especially at night. It felt like a maze. And with our luggage it wasnt fun. We were starving too (didnt see any food places at airport) and found a starbucks just before 11, only to be told it is closing. - Finally got annoyed with the walking and found a taxi that took 500 yen to drop us to hotel and put us out of misery. No room service available at this time. I’ve stayed at hotels that have in room dining till much later, but none in japan offered this. Ate some snacks from 711 and called it a night.
Day 2- - First thing on agenda in morning was Shibuya Sky at 10. There was a lineup before it opened, and shortly after it opened a sign went up that tickets had sold out for the day. Luckily i pre-booked it. It offers great views and we enjoyed it. Line-up to get in was acceptable. - Next up we went to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Moved it to this day since it was rain forecast for next day. We got there by taxi. Long line up to get tickets and it would be easily 40-50 min wait to get in but i had pre-booked online, so they directed me to a gate with no wait. i scanned my QR code and was good to go. It was cloudy overcast by this point and while garden is nice and we hit peak cherry blossoms, the white blossoms didnt quite pop against white/grey skies like it would against a clear blue sky. Overall it was ok mostly cause of the gloomy weather. - We spent just a bit over an hour and left. we shopped a bit around the area in some stores and found a sanrio themed pop-up cafe that my daughter wanted to eat. Cafe was tiny and had a line-up. We waited 30-40 min and decided to skip it as we wanted to get back to hotel and get rest before evening. Grabbed some snacks on way back to hotel. - Evening we got to akihabara by like 6PM by taxi. We liked it a lot and wish we spent more time here. Was looking for Sega buildings only to realize it these were rebranded to Gigo. Sorry but the red Sega building was iconic. Gigo just doesnt have the same ring. Played at the game machines and won a figure my daughter wanted. Shopped at other stores. We had a restaurant reservation at 8 that we were running late for. Tried waiting for taxi for almost 15 min and there were people ahead of us. No taxi showed up. I checked google maps and decided to take train since akihabara station was right by taxi stand. - However the train line we needed to take ended up being a 15 min walk. I think it was like 4 floors underground too. Basically we got to our restaurant by 825 and were denied seats because we were more than 15 min late. At this point we were soaking wet from rain, hungry and tired. We let restaurant staff know our displeasure and took taxi back to hotel. - We decided to eat at the restaurant in the hotel. Got there 930. Lady in front tells me they arent taking any guests since they close at 10. My wife who was tired and hungry was not having any of that. We convinced that lady to let us eat. Interestingly enough we saw a japanese couple just stroll in 5 min after us…
To be continued…

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