Category: Travel

Grutto Pass – Tokyo Cheaply

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Grutto Pass costs 2 000 yen (in 2016, about 16€) and with it you can visit most of the Tokyo’s museums and sightseeing attractions. It’s valid for two months starting from the first use and you can buy it from the most of museums and places where you can use it. You can also buy it in set with day train ticket. When buying the pass you get small notebook of places where you can use it or get discounts (and it is in English or at least was when I bought mine in 2015).

http://www.rekibun.or.jp/grutto/pdf/grutto_pass2016.pdf

From the link above you can find places where the Grutto Pass is valid in year 2016. Below the ones I went and liked the most…

 

 

tomatoes, you know, are real
that is, if they remain tomatoes
if they try to be melons, however,
they then became fakes
though everything and everyone is real
in their own way,
it seems we always try so hard to become fakes
-Mitsuo Aida

Mitsuo Aida Museum

Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 800 yen. Even if the poems are at Japanese are they beautiful to look and every poem is translated.

 

 

Ueno Zoo

Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 600 yen. Go and see pandas and other cute animals!

 

 

Tokyo Sea Life Park

Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 700 yen. Who doesn’t love aquariums?

 

 

Miraikan

Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 620 yen. The national museum of emerging science and innovation. From the first look it may seem like museum for children but it’s a lot more. Go there to see robots and space ship.

 

 

Shitamachi Museum

Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 300 yen.  Get to know how Japanese people lived in the past. They have free English guided tours and you can even get free fortune like the one above.

 

 

National Museum of Nature and Science

Normally 620 yen but with Grutto pass you get 100 yen discount. This museum is huge and full of things to see. For example 360 theater, dinosaur bones and information of japanese nature. I recommend for science and nature students.

 

Should I buy Grutto Pass?

My opinion is yes. If you are going to spend more than day or two in Tokyo then definitely yes. You don’t need to go many places before Grutto pass pays itself back.

Also was fun how people always commented that I must be professional tourist because I have the Grutto pass. Apparently normally non Japanese speaking people don’t know about Grutto pass. Using it made me have many funny conversations with museum guides and other local people.

I hope me sharing my experience with Grutto pass makes someone else to safe their money! For me staying over month in Tokyo it saved a lot of money and made me go places I maybe wouldn’t have gone with out the free admission.

Follow my blog to read more of my adventures!
With love and passion,

Neidotta

Wild

Published on by LostViiviLeave a comment

I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild while in Japan and my mind was completely sold out. I have been planning long time hiking trip since then. Now I want to recommend this amazing story for you.

I remember perfectly the moment when I first encountered this book. Last autumn in my first night in Kyoto. I had been over month in Japan but had left safe Tokyo behind me and proceeded to new city and small hostel. You would say I felt lonely in the big kitchen all alone clock pointing 2 AM.

That’s when I found bookshelf full of different kind of stories. WILD the name draw my attention and after that I couldn’t drop this book. In the next two months I read it two times and my mind was never same than before. I need to go hiking alone for long time. The feeling doesn’t leave me.

The funny thing was how after reading Strayed’s book for first time I met bunch of different hikers. They all made my desire to hike even worse so now I have been planning the trip for next summer.  In two months this book come kind of like my bible –I’m just joking but really it has deep meaning for me- when I felt like giving up or going back home just looking the cover of this book did help.

So I owe thank you for Cheryl Strayed for inspiring me and that’s why I’m sharing this book with you. I hope someone else will find as much hope as I did from her story.

AUTHOR: CHERYL STRAYED
YEAR: 2012
GENRE: TRAVEL, HIKING, ADVENTURE, FINDING YOURSELF
PAGES: 315
COUNTRY: USA

 

PLOT:

After losing her mother everything in Cheryl Strayed’s life goes wrong. Her before close family starts withdraw and the lovely marriage with the man of her dreams turns to burden.

Then she starts hiking Pacific Crest Trail without any training in the middle of wild all alone over a thousand miles. It’s sounds like good idea and way to find yourself but soon Cheryl realizes how difficult hiking really is. However she never gives up.

While walking this young woman learns new things about herself, meets interesting new people and sees wonderful things in wild. In her memoir of her trip the readers can experience those things without leaving our safe homes.