After checking into our hotel, it was time to eat dinner. We hopped on the shuttle that stops right in front of the Hilton and rode a very short distance to the Tokyo Disney Resort Monorail.
Riding the Tokyo Disney Resort Monorail to Ikspiari
The Tokyo Disney Resort Monorail is very easy to navigate. As you can see, there are only four stops. Our hotel was at Bayside Station. To get to Ikspiari, we rode the monorail two stops to Resort Gateway Station. Unlike the Disney theme parks back home, the monorail is not free. I had wanted to buy physical monorail tickets because they come in cute, limited edition designs. However, when we went to the machine, our Suica card (loaded on our iphone) and credit cards would not work. It turns out, you can only use cash/coins (yen) in the machines. We ended up just scanning our Suica cards on our phones to pass through the monorail gates and the fare automatically deducted from our Suica account balance.
The Disney theming on the monorail is so on point!
What We Ate At Ikspiari
There are many restaurants to choose from in Ikspiari. We actually passed a really large group waiting to be seated at TGI Fridays, of all places (I believe they were Japanese). I did some research about the restaurants beforehand and I chose Tonkatsu Wako for our first dinner. I remembered eating at this restaurant (different location) during our last trip to Japan. How fitting that D and I ate at Wako for our very last meal in 2011 and now we were eating there with the kids for our very first meal. It is also interesting (as noted in my blog post), that the cost of a meal back then was around $15. With the current weak state of the yen, the same meal actually cost less than ten dollars thirteen years later!
When we were looking for the restaurant, I was flustered because I was not certain we were at Wako. I was expecting there to be some signage in English. However, D just walked right in before I had a chance to look it up on my phone. The waitress quickly seated us and brought out the tea. I tried asking the waitress if we were in Wako, but she just gave me a quizzical look. Even when I was looking at the menu, I was still confused. I had k look it up on Google translate, and she confirmed we were at the correct restaurant. I bet my kids will still remember this part of the story for years to come.
The tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) was as good as I remembered!
For dessert we walked to Nana’s Green Tea.
We shared this scrumptious Matcha Shiratama Mochi Parfait. This was just the first of many matcha treats that we had during our trip.
Shopping at Bon Voyage
Ikspiari has several stores, but we were tired and I wanted to get to bed early. If I had more time, I would have like to stop in at 3 Coins Plus and Daiso. There is also a Disney Store. We did however, walk over to Bon Voyage, which is a larger Disney Store at Maihama Station (right next to the Resort Gateway monorail station).
The Bon Voyage store was quite large and had a wide variety of merchandise. I bought a present for my Disney-loving friend, but that is all.
This might be a good place to do some souvenir shopping if you do not want to have to carry your purchases all day in the parks. Also, the shops in the parks were a lot more crowded.
It was drizzling a little when we left the store and walked back to the monorail station. This was the only rain we experienced during our trip. Since June is considered “rainy season” in Japan, I was expecting there to be a lot more. I guess we lucked out.
Ikspiari Final Thoughts
While Ikspiari can be compared to Downtown Disney, it is not officially connected to the Disney theme parks. In fact, you will not find much Disney theming at all. I probably would not carve out time in my itinerary just to visit Ikspiari, and it does not make sense to go here in the middle of the day while visiting one of the Disney parks. However, Ikspiari was the perfect place for us to find a nice dinner and walk around the night we first arrived to the Tokyo Disney Resort area.