We arrived in Tokyo in the afternoon. After checking into our hotel in Akihabara, we ate late lunch at a restaurant nearby.

Pro tip: don't worry about buying reserved seats if you're travelling from Osaka to Tokyo and back. There are several trains throughout the day, so arrive early and simply line up for the one you catch. This is, of course, not advisable for stations in between like Nagoya and Shizuoka, since by the time the trains make a stop there, the unreserved cars will have been full or the good seats taken.

Also, sit on the left side to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji... if the weather is good or if you don't end up sleeping through your trip!

If you're coming in from Osaka, ICOCA cards work in Tokyo as well, although you'd have to go back to Osaka to return the cards to get your deposit back. Of course, you can always keep your ICOCA card as a remembrance or if you're coming back to Japan any time soon!

I'm not sure if ICOCA cards work in non-JR lines since we mostly just took the JR Yamanote Line and the JR Chuo Line once, but I'm pretty sure JR East's Suica cards can be used in JR West services as well. Just in case you're coming in from Tokyo!

Our first meal in Tokyo was probably a little bit pricier than ideal—personally I could live off of konbini food for the duration of our stay if that meant we could save money—but it was good and I left rather satisfied.

A tip I learned from a friend is to stick to JR Yamanote Line if Tokyo trains are too overwhelming. It goes in a circle and stops by most of the important places like Ikebukuro, Shibuya, and Akihabara. It can take longer to get to places if you're staying on the other side of the loop from your target destination of the day, but at least you're not going to get lost in Tokyo's crazy train jungle!

It would have been nice if we got there a lot earlier and seen the place in brighter light. We were pressed for time, though, so there wasn't any room for regrets. For now it was enough that we got to see what we saw.

It was still pretty early and we could've walked around Harajuku a bit more, but it was getting dark and I think that kinda messed up our perception of time. Back home, dark sky means late night! We also had our older companions to consider, so we immediately hopped on the train to visit Hachiko and the famed Shibuya Crossing.

Unfortunately, circumstances made it so that I didn't get to meet up with a dear friend while we were both in Tokyo. I knew she was there because of an EXO concert but despite a heads up from her I wasn't completely prepared for the onslaught of EXO promotional materials in Shibuya.

I didn't take any pictures of the EXO stuff although it was literally everywhere and one of the big screens was playing their debut promo on loop.

It was not this screen. In my defense, the crowd and place was too overwhelming for me to focus!

Shibuya Crossing was a lot smaller than I imagined but it was still pretty big and there were far too many people than should have any business crossing the street together. I don't necessarily advice against going here: it is part of the Tokyo experience, after all. It's just that there are too many people in one place and Hachiko is literally just a statue of a dog, so there's really not much reward in visiting for just those two things.

I did, however, enjoy seeing everything with my nerd goggles on. An alternate history version of the Shibuya Crossing area is one of the prominent locations in the K Project anime, so seeing all the similarities was fun. I also found Hachiko even though we went out the wrong exit only because I played The World Ends With You.

We went back to Akihabara and made a detour to Animate before heading back to our hotel. We passed by the AKB48 Cafe and the Gundam Cafe, and I had to contain myself when the big screen on a building nearby was playing an Owari no Seraph ad. I ended up not buying anything (which I kind of maybe sorta regret) and my companions ended up with a bag of persimmons from the grocery store just right across Animate.

Since our hotel was just in Akihabara, my brothers and I spent the next two nights walking around the area. At some point I had a moment of realization that Onoda of Yowamushi Pedal cycled all the way to this place since childhood and it was pretty scary because it's not somewhere I'd leave a child unattended.

Anyway, our first day in Tokyo ended on a positive note and I went to bed with the dokis in my heart even when my feet were super sore!