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RTW Trip Day #2: Tokyo - Sengaku‑ji, Goshuin Hunting & TeamLab Planets Immersive Experience
- andrewsco3
- Oct 1, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: 21 hours ago
Welcome to our Round‑the‑World Family Sabbatical diary! We’re a Calgary‑based family travelling for 100 days, documenting each step so other families can get an honest, real‑life look at long‑term travel with kids - the highs, the chaos, and everything in between.
Day 2 was our first full day in Tokyo, and jet lag definitely made itself known, but we still managed to pack in a decent amount of exploring. We explored some nearby temples, collected our very first goshuin, and topped the day off with the mind‑bending, immersive world of TeamLab Planets.
You can browse the full 100‑day contents list here, but for now, come along as we stroll through Takanawa, dive into samurai history, and end the evening surrounded by glowing digital art you can walk through, touch, and even wade in.
Day 2 Highlights at a Glance
Exploring the Prince Sakura Hotel Japanese Garden
Visiting Sengaku‑ji Temple and the graves of the 47 Ronin
The girls’ first goshuin - complete with sutra copying
Candle lighting at Koyasan Tokyo Betsuin
A mind‑blowing afternoon at TeamLab Planets
The Prince Sakura Japanese Garden
We started our first full day in Tokyo by… sleeping in! Jet lag hit us hard! I was wide awake at 2:30 a.m., Evelyn at 3:00 a.m., and Jess at 3:30 a.m. After a quick grab‑and‑go breakfast from 7‑Eleven, we decided to keep things simple for our first day and explore the area around the hotel.
Pro Tip for Families: Don’t expect too much on Day 1 - jet lag hits hard, and everyone will be all over the place.
Our first stop was the beautiful Japanese garden just behind the hotel. It’s only a minute’s walk, but it feels like stepping into another world compared to the hustle and bustle we experienced yesterday. Peaceful, quiet, and the perfect place to ease into the day.
There is a carp fish pond, a bell tower, a small temple, and even a traditional tea house. Apparently most of the structures were moved from other prefectures around Tokyo in the 60's but date back to the 16th century!
At night, the garden looks even better and it is going to be a pretty amazing way to finish our days after busy days exploring Tokyo.
You can read more about the gardens here.
Sengaku-ji Temple
Next we made the short walk to visit Sengaku-ji temple (the first of many I'm sure). This temple is famous for its graveyard where the "47 Ronin" samurai were buried. The girls are doing a great job of being respectful and bowing as they walk into the temples.
We went inside the memorial museum, which displays samurai artifacts and lots of information about each of the 47 ronin (no photos allowed). Afterwards, we lit some incense sticks and placed them at the gravestones as a sign of respect.
Just outside the temple, the girls found a shop that was selling goshuincho, which are special books for collecting temple stamps. We bought one for them to share, and they went in search of their very first goshuin at the temple.
What made the experience even more fun was that this Sengaku-ji temple still follows a very traditional practice, where before receiving the stamp, the girls were asked to copy a sutra by carefully tracing it with a pen, and only then were they given the goshuin.
It was the girls’ first goshuin, and having it done in such a traditional way made the experience all the more memorable.
Koyosan Tokyo Betsuin
We were all really feeling the jet lag, so we headed back to the hotel, but on the way stopped at another temple called Koyasan Tokyo Betsuin.
Unlike Sengaku-ji, we were able to go inside this one, and the girls lit a candle for Grandad. They also added another goshuin to their book, and were able to watch the man carefully stamp the pages and write the calligraphy right in front of them.
Afterwards, we grabbed a quick lunch from 7-Eleven before heading off to sort out our Shinkansen tickets. We wanted to reserve seats on the Mt. Fuji side of the train to hopefully catch a glimpse!
An Immersive Digital Art Experiece at TeamLabs Planets!
In the afternoon we visited TeamLab Planets with the kids and I have to say it was a pretty incredible experience!
Pro tip: Early purchase is strongly recommended, as tickets sell out quickly. Book here.
TeamLab Planets is not your typical art exhibit. It's a massive immersive space where you don't just look at the artwork, you actually walk through it.
There are some sections where you have to go barefoot and many of the rooms involve water, squishy floors or mirrored spaces filled with light, so it definitely felt like a sensory overload at times. There were a few rooms where we got a little dizzy!
One of the most memorable rooms involves wading through knee-deep water with digital koi swimming around our legs that scattered as we moved.
Another space was filled with giant glowing spheres, like oversized balloons, that changed colors whenever we pushed them around.
I think the kids favourite part was the Catch and Collect Forest game, where they could spot and collect extinct animals running along the walls as you moved through the exhibits using an app on our phones.
Each time you 'collected' an animal, you got to learn about the extinct animal, and of course the girls loved having an excuse to take a phone around with them!
My personal favorite was the floating garden where hundreds of real orchids hovered up and down as we walked through. I have no idea how they pulled that off but it was stunning.
It’s really the kind of place that’s hard to capture in words - super interactive, totally unique, and it honestly felt like stepping into a video game. Plus the light makes it really hard to take good photos, but here are a few more to give an idea...
Food at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai
Our first real food experience in Japan was at the food court in Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai. At first we worried the kids might not find anything they liked since the choices were all very traditional Japanese and quite different from the food courts we’re used to in Canada.
There were stalls serving sushi, ramen, grilled eel on sticks, matcha treats, and plenty of other options that weren't that familiar. We ended up at a yakitori stand where we shared chicken and beef skewers. Evelyn liked the chicken one so much that we had to go back for another!
Jess tried a taiyaki, which is a Japanese snack shaped like a fish that’s somewhere between a waffle and a cake, filled with something sweet. It’s often filled with red bean paste, but luckily we found a chocolate one for her!
Getting back to the hotel took a little longer than expected! After two wrong train rides we realized we actually needed a bus. When we finally made it back, we called Nana and Pops on FaceTime and by the time the call ended both girls had already fallen asleep.
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