When I learned that my mom and her partner would be going to Japan in March for the Tokyo marathon, I was so excited for them to be going on this adventure.

I didn’t immediately think I would find myself tagging along, but that’s exactly what happened.

Tokyo seemed like a pipe dream of a location for so long. Somewhere I’d always wanted to go, but would never be able to make it happen. And suddenly this destination went from being a fantasy to reality.

We booked flights, hotel – I took some Japanese on Duolingo for a few months – next thing I knew, we were on the flight to Tokyo.

Unfortunately, not everything about travel is super romantic. We were given in-flight breakfast right before our shaky descent, and I have a pretty uneasy stomach as it is. So by the time we landed, I was super queasy.

Throwing up in the airport was not how I intended to use a Japanese toilet for the first time, but there we were.

*Mom and I landing in Japan! (Feb 2025)*

Landing in Tokyo was honestly a huge culture shock.

Specifically in the sense that I’ve never been to a country where they used an entirely different alphabet than English uses. I was grateful for familiarizing myself with it on Duolingo for a bit, but it was still much harder to navigate.

I’ve also never dealt with yen coins before, so it took a moment to understand what each coin looked like when paying for anything.

The three of us got in a taxi and showed the driver a map of where the hotel was. He got us there and we were thankful to be somewhere with a bed. Arigato gozaimasu.

It was pretty easy to swing by a McDonald’s nearby, point at a photo on the menu and pay with a yen bill (Arigato gozaimasu) before going back to the hotel, falling into my bed and completely crashing.

After waking up from the most desperately needed sleep of my life, I went with my mom and her partner down to breakfast at the hotel.

The Blossom Hibiya’s breakfast was absolutely unmissable. What a great buffet and a solid meal to start a day of walking.

*Odaiba views: Gundam and the Tokyo sign (Feb 2025)*

Navigating the metro in Tokyo was actually surprisingly easy. Every line is colour-coded, and every station has a letter-number combination. We knew which station we had to get on, and which number to get off.

If you can navigate the metro in a new country where you don’t speak the language, you can do anything.

*teamLab Planets is so colourful and engaging (Feb 2025)*

While Mike went to the Tokyo Marathon Expo to pick up some merch, my mom and I headed over to teamLab Planets – one of the stops I was most excited about on our trip.

teamLab Planets is a massive immersive art experience with multiple rooms where you find yourself wading through moving water, jumping and rolling over a floor like bedding, and engaging with your inner child along the way.

My mom and I had a great time exploring each of the various exhibits and spending the morning just playing. teamLab Planets is all smiles.

Once we were done at teamLab, we made our way to DiverCity Tokyo Plaza for lunch. It was nice to go on a bit of a walk in the spring weather on our way to the mall. But by the time we got there, we had worked up quite an appetite.

We grabbed some lunch at Teppan Express in the food court, which was a fun language journey to go on. But we managed to get a delicious food court lunch.

After lunch, we met back up with Mike who had a bunch of fun Marathon Expo stories, and went for a walk near the water. It’s so wild to me how Tokyo can have so many different vibes at once.

Sometimes it’s bustling and packed with people, other times you’re wandering a wide sidewalk with no one else around, marvelling at how serene everything feels.

We wandered over to the Tokyo Statue of Liberty (did you know that there was a Statue of Liberty in Japan?) grabbed a sakura frappuccino from Starbucks and simply enjoyed the views.

If I’ve learned anything travelling in my 30s, it’s that I’m no longer immune to jetlag. So we headed back to the hotel for a nap before figuring out dinner.

Dinner on the first real night of our trip was our first real hurdle travelling as a group together. We couldn’t decide on what we wanted, and by the time we committed to standing in a line to wait for a seat somewhere, it was late and I was hangry as hell.

So I made the call to let my mom and her partner figure out what they wanted on their own, and I grabbed some snacks from the nearby Family Mart (the real MVP on this trip) to enjoy in my hotel room while exploring Japanese TV options.

Day one was overwhelming. It was full of a wave of emotions. And I couldn’t wait for day two!