Last year we visited Shibuya and Harajuku on New Year's Day and got a glimpse of what usually happens then. We expected that a lot of stores would be closed but that's not exactly the case. New Year's Day is the traditional start of the Japanese Fukubukuro season and the start of many New Year's sales all over Japan. For the people wondering what Fukubukuro means: it stands for "lucky bag" or "mystery bag". So what is so special about these bags? Well, I think ...

People often say that their pet is part of the family, well in Japan that is more true than ever. Especially if you experience it up close. Michelle and I had visited pet store before in our previous trips to Japan, but we of course could never take one with us due to our short trip (and we stayed in a hotel). Because we were looking what kind of stuff they had for cats, we were visiting pet stores again. We will be taking our cats with us the next time we go ba...

Today we went to the Setagaya Boroichi flea market, which has been held for over 400 years now and supposed to hold over 700 stalls of mostly second-hand stuff. We took the normal trains to the Sangenjaya station, which wasn't busy at all. There we had to hop over to the Setagaya line and at the station it was packed already. We made a joke that with this amount of people it would probably be a single car only line, but unfortunately we were right! We were pack...

Today the plan was to go to Tokyo Big Sight and see the Dezome-Shiki (New Year's Fire review of the Tokyo fire department), which is organized every year. Here they show the power of the fire department in different sorts of ways like a parade and an exhibition hall. Unfortunately we all left too late to be there in time for the opening but went there anyway. When we arrived some people told us we could not go to the tribunes because there was no room. It was q...

While Michelle stayed at home because she was sick Dennis and Joost went to Shibuya to do some exploring on their own. They had a deal where Joost would do the planning of where to go to and Dennis would navigate the route. We started at Shibuya and decided to walk the rest of the tour. First off to the big Loft at Shibuya. This Loft is 7 stories high and has a big diversity of items, from crafts work items to clothes and from furniture to children's toys. Goin...