anandrag

Will be there 3 pm Sat till 9 pm Sun courtesy of UA $450 fare from ORD... Staying at Park Hyatt.

Looking for ideas on what to do. Would day trip to Kyoto on day 2 make sense? Jane it (close to) cherry blossom season?

abmj-jr

No.

anandrag

Ok that's clear message...
So guess would revise question then to what to do in Tokyo for 30 hours.
From food perspective, I'm vegetarian so that rules out most sushi places but have heard there's amazing Buddhist food that's typically vegetarian

NewbieRunner

I have no personal experience but a Google search has found these.

http://tokyofoodcast.com/index.php/e...ar-tokyo/2165/ (information may be out of date - better to check temple/restaurant's website)

http://www.deepjapan.org/a/3939

ksandness

Another favorite for people seeking out specific types of restaurants:

http://bento.com/

I'm not a vegetarian, but here are a few pointers.

Not all sushi bar fare is off limits. For example, you could go to a conveyer-belt sushi place for a midday snack and eat the sliced omelet pieces and the cucumber rolls (kappa maki).

Even a convenience store can offer meat-free and fish-free varieties of musubi (rice balls, or rather, rice triangles) embedded with sesame, seaweed, or sour plum.

While there are "toppings" for noodle dishes that are meat-free, the broth itself is usually fish-based or meat-based. The same is true of miso soup, which is usually made by stirring miso paste into a fish-based broth.

Japanified Chinese restaurants sometimes offer vegetable stir-fries, and Korean restaurants may have a vegetarian bibimbap available. There seem to be more Indian restaurants every time I go to Tokyo, and of course, they are always a good source of vegetarian food.

But I assume you want Japanese food while in Japan.

Temple cuisine can give you a huge and varied vegan feast, and there are also Western-style vegetarian restaurants around.

bmwe92fan

I'd recommend grabbing some of the great Indian food or noodles and heading out to see the cherry blossoms - your dates are forecasted to be the peak of the bloom - plenty of great areas to see them - take a sumida river boat tour or head over to nakameguro and get some great street food while enjoying the thousands of crazed Sakura tourists enjoying the blossoms.

You really don't have enough time to get out of the city - so just enjoy Tokyo nightlife on your first night and enjoy the cherry blossoms the next day...

abmj-jr

Park Hyatt is right in the middle of Shinjuku so there will be plenty to do and see any time. I am sure the limo-bus runs to your hotel from NRT and back or you could take the Narita Express train to Shinjuku Station.

The PH is a pretty short walk to Meiji-Jingu Shrine and a little longer walk to Yoyogi Park, both prime cherry blossom viewing sites. I'd recommend going in the morning as both will be overrun with partiers in afternoon and evening.

NewbieRunner

Another good cherry blossom viewing spot near the PH is Shinjuku Gyoen. For night-time viewing Chidorigafuchi along the Imperial Palace moat is popular but it will be very crowded.

txflyer77

With 30 hours I would consider changing to a hotel in the Ueno area and exploring that side of Tokyo. Asakusa, the Yanesen neighborhoods, Ueno Park, Akihabara. It's not the modern side of Tokyo (other than Akiba), but personally I find it more interesting because of that.

Ueno Park is also a prime cherry blossom viewing spot.

Staying in that part of Tokyo cuts out some transit time on an already-short visit by taking the Keisei Skyliner to Ueno or Nippori (also the PH is not conveniently located to a metro).

OTOH, if the modern side of Tokyo is what you're after, please disregard.

bmwe92fan

Given OP travel dates I'm thinking it's going to be hard to find a hotel on short notice - but completely agree with your suggestions - as someone that lives in Tokyo I find the "old" sections much more enjoyable....

LapLap

"Not all sushi bar fare is off limits. For example, you could go to a conveyer-belt sushi place for a midday snack and eat the sliced omelet pieces and the cucumber rolls (kappa maki)."

This is not good advice for a vegetarian as the sliced omelet pieces are invariably laced with the same fish based dashi that miso shiru is (and any number of other Japanese staples are).

bmwe92fan

I guess it depends on the level of "vegetarian" - still think it was good advice as what constitutes a vegetarian varies dramatically these days....

LapLap

No it doesn't.

Old thread with lots of outdated suggestions, but we did once give a stab at providing a vegetarian and vegan friendly resource.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japan...d-threads.html
Much of the advice is still valid.

ksandness

Sorry for the misinformation. The recipe for the sushi omelet that I have is based on mirin and doesn't have any dashi in it.

evergrn

$450 is round-trip, everything included? That's a fantastic price.

Like others, I don't recommend Kyoto day trip on your day 2. In order to maximize your trip experience, definitely recommend staying put in Tokyo, thoroughly enjoying your 5star hotel and enjoying cherry blossom there. However, if you have burning desire to go to Kyoto and you won't be back in Jpn anytime soon, then Kyoto is doable and I don't think it's necessarily insane. If you leave PH at 7am, you should be able to get to Kyoto ~10am, have 5hrs to spend in Kyoto, and travel back towards Tokyo area and be at NRT ~7pm. With 5hrs, you'll have to really focus on a particular area of Kyoto... even then it'll be a bit of whirlwind. But enough to see Kiyomizudera, shops nearby, Gion and a couple other temples in the area. My father-in-law also was staying in Shinjuku and had an evening flight to catch... we took him to a place on his last day that was just as far from Shinjuku as Kyoto is (~3hr each way), we felt like we had a lot of time/fun and still got back to Shinjuku (we left his bags with front desk) in plenty of time for his flight.

+1. I have vegetarian friends who don't really care about a bit of potential contamination and will go to sushi places.