My maiden trip to Tokyo was planned around visiting the major sights outside Tokyo for the first three days to maximise the JR Tokyo Wide Pass we had gotten before the trip and spending the last three days around Tokyo city. As we had a redeye flight, I did not pack too many itineraries on our first day.

Arrival at Narita Airport

There have been several changes to the immigration to Japan in recent months. Due to the recent depreciation of the Japanese Yen, Japan has seen a large inflow of tourists, resulting in ridiculously long wait times at immigration. To manage the situation at immigration, the Japanese Government encourage visitors to register on the Visit Japan Web. The latest change to the web service now only generates one QR code for faster immigration clearance. I thought there would be two queues for the immigration process, one for those who had registered on the Visit Japan Web and another for those who hadn’t. However, we found out that wasn’t the case at Narita Airport. There was only one queue at the immigration, regardless of registration status on the Visit Japan Web. Although only one flight landed before ours, we spent the next 1½ hours waiting in the queue to clear immigration. Only four counters were open to handle the large influx of visitors waiting to clear the immigration, contributing to the lengthy wait times. The immigration situation felt more chaotic when we spotted airport staff randomly picking people in the queue to register our fingerprints. I felt registering on Visit Japan Web did not improve the immigration process since everyone was made to fall into a single queue.

Sorting out our Transportation at Narita Airport

Just when we thought clearing the immigration was the end of the chaos at the immigration. We were in for another shock when we arrived at B1 to settle our transportation tickets. We wanted to collect our JR Tokyo Wide Pass and get our Suica cards simultaneously before collecting and making seat reservations for the Skyliner tickets I bought online. The way from the airport arrival hall to the subway counters was well-marked. When we arrived, there wasn’t much of a queue in all the counters. The JR East Travel Centre was easy to locate, marked with oversized fonts on its door. We were third in the queue but had to wait around 10 minutes as only one counter served passengers who had pre-booked passes online. We would spend the next 15 minutes at the counter collecting our tickets and purchasing a Suica Card. But when we enquired about the child Suica Card, we were told to join another queue across from the JR East Travel Centre.

When we settled our JR tickets, a long queue had formed at Counter C. We spent another 30 mins queuing at the counter and finally got the child Suica Card for my nephew. The Skyliner train service is the fastest way from Narita Airport to downtown Tokyo. I had previously bought our Skyliner tickets on their official website, as we would have saved around ¥200 for each adult. There are two counters and three queues for the Skyliner ticketing. Not knowing which queue was for what, we initially queued at the blue-coloured counter next to the gates with a huge “Keisei Ticketing Counter” written on it. There are two queues formed at this counter, one for the automated ticket purchasing machine and another for the manned counter for assistance. We queued up at the manned counter as we had already bought our tickets. After queueing for about 15 mins, we were told by the staff at the counter we were in the wrong queue, and we could only redeem our tickets at the shop opposite (next to JR East Travel Centre) that says “Skyliner & Keisei Information”. We spent another 1 hour queuing up to get our reserved seats. By the time it was our turn, we could only catch the 12.15 pm train to Ueno.

I thought the ¥200 saved by buying the tickets online was not worth it, and we spent more time queuing to get the tickets than buying tickets on the spot (the queues seem to move faster). One good tip we got from the staff at the information centre was to alight at Nippori Station instead of Ueno Station when switching to the Yamanote Line. We were told that at Nippori Station, we were only required to move from one platform to another, whereas at Ueno Station, we would be required to switch stations.

Change in Plan – Scrapping Tokyo Tower Visit for Ueno

I had originally planned to visit Tokyo Tower and Asahi TV station in the afternoon before heading to Ueno in the evening. However, the long queue times at the immigration and the ticketing counters took up 4 hours of our time. It was around 1.45 pm by the time we reached our hotel. It was already 2.20 pm by the time we settled into our room and got ready to explore Tokyo. Our Tokyo Tower visit was the 2.30 pm timeslot; factoring in the time required to make our way (it would take us around 30 mins), we would have missed our timeslot for entrance. We ended up cancelling our original plan of visiting the sights around Roppongi and opted to go shopping at Ueno instead.

The Historic and Vibrant Ameyoko Shopping Street

Yamanote Line is our go-to JR line for the next few days, as it covers most of the popular areas in Tokyo. It took 30 minutes from our hotel to Ueno by Yamanote Line. Ueno has several attractions, such as the zoo and the Ueno garden. As we had a long day, I kept the to-visit list only to the Ameyoko Shopping Street this evening. Ameyoko Shopping Street dates back to the post-World War II period and started as a black-market selling things from the soldiers. This place subsequently transformed into a marketplace selling candies and sugar (its original name, Ameya Yokocho, translates to Candy Store Alley). To Ameyoko Shopping Street, we should have taken the south exit – Hirokoji Exit, directly across from the street. As we were rather overwhelmed with the number of exits (nine total), we barged towards whatever exit popped up and took the east exit – the Iriya Gate exit instead. This exit took us another 15-minute walk to Ameyoko Shopping Street.

After some navigation, we found ourselves in one of the back alleys of Ameyoko. This small street is populated with restaurants. After another 5 minutes of walking, we came to the main street of Ameyoko. On top of the restaurants, we spotted many more shops selling various goods, from clothing to shoes to medical stores. There are several smaller alleyways that branched out from the main Ameyoko Shopping Street, and it seemed nothing much was going on in these streets. The main actions and more “shoppable” stores are on the main street, where there are two large drug stores on the main street alone. Nearer to the end of the street opposite Ueno Station, the main street merges with its neighbouring street, where we found eateries dominating this part of the street. Numerous seafood eateries lined up on either side of the street with outdoor seating, where patrons can choose their live seafood from the tanks, and the chef would whip up a dish. On top of these cooked food stores, stores sell from omiyage to dried food. The neighbouring street was dotted with stores selling desserts.