As a US passport holder, I’m good to just leave the airport and come back for my flight, right? The airport will be the Haneda airport, and the layover will be in the daytime.
the trains are so cheap. or they were when i was there. i would ride around and stay on a loop and pop off to get stuff. i didn’t spend hardly any time in tokyo, but convenience store food in japan is the absolute jam.
“Lawson” and “Everyone” were my fave, as far as chains go. the onigiri at Everyone was a little ball of heaven.
post offices have international ATMs if you wanna get/use cash. where i was didn’t really take CC, so that was a thing i had to manage. also, look for 99¥ shops for cheap gifts and souvenirs. their cheapo nicknacks are hysterical sometimes. i still have this insane cartoony hamster-shaped cutting board i bought at one 15 years ago. i love looking at it and explaining it origins when guests say, “wtf is that??”
Haneda makes it easy since it’s near downtown, Narita would suck. You’ll have like 7-8 hours to fuck around so I would get some good food, ride the trains, check out Harajuku/Shibuya/Akihabara, go to an arcade, experience the chaos of a Mega Don Quijote, just people watch. If you’re into Ghibli stuff you’d probably have enough time to check out the Ghibli museum but then you wouldn’t have time for anything else. If you’re into the Like a Dragon series, definitely head over to Kabukicho.
Ghibli Museum requires a reservation and they sell out early.
What kind of interests do you have? I, for instance, am an architecture, transit, and whiskey nerd, so I made sure to ride a monorail, see some Ando buildings, and geek out at a third floor whiskey bar with 8 seats.
