Stuart's Wildlife Diary: Japan Part 1

Sunday, 1 March 2026

Japan Part 1 - Tokyo

Sunday 8th February duly arrived and after months of planning and organising it was finally time to catch the train from Plymouth to Heathrow Airport for our flight to Japan the following morning.

We booked the trip ourselves with flights, hotels, trains, attraction tickets and tours all organised beforehand and it all went very smoothly. Our itinerary started with an overnight stay at Heathrow Airport before a flight to Tokyo on Monday 9th February and we arrived the following day at 7:30am Japanese time for a 3 night stay at Ueno. We then took a flight to Kushiro on Friday 13th February for a 2 night stay and then a train to Sapporo on Sunday 15th February for a 2 night stay before flying back to Tokyo on Tuesday 17th February to catch a bullet train to Nagano for a 3 night stay. Another bullet train journey on Friday 20th February took us to Osaka for a 5 night stay before it was back to Tokyo on a bullet train on Wednesday 25th February for 2 more nights before we flew home to the UK on Friday 27th February.

The train journey up to Heathrow Airport was interesting with sightings of a Hare, Roe Deer, Red Kites, 3 Great White Egrets and a Red Admiral of note along with a very flooded Exminster Marsh and some very flooded Levels around the Taunton area.

We arrived safely at Tokyo Airport on Tuesday 10th February but unfortunately our cases didn't! This is the first time that something like this has happened to us in all our years of travelling so I guess it was due to happen at some point but it was a bit of crimp on our arrival into Japan despite getting crystal clear views of a snow capped Mount Fuji as we came in to land. Fortunately our cases arrived at our hotel the next morning so normal service was resumed from there on in.

We had no real sleep on our flight to Japan so we endured a very long first day in Tokyo fighting jetlag and trying to keep awake, we spent the day around Yanaka and Ueno Park which were close to our hotel and I had plenty of bird sightings there to keep me occupied and where the birds were surprisingly tame.

Buddha, Tenno-ji Temple, Yanaka Cemetery

Temple, Ueno Park

Komatsunomiya Akihiti Shinno Statue. Ueno Park

Yanaka Cemetery

Temple, Ueno Park

It was strange to have travelled the furthest I've ever been from the UK on the longest flight I've ever been on but to see familiar birds like Feral Pigeon, Little Egret, Tree Sparrow, Grey Heron, Pintail, Cormorant, Tufted Duck, Kingfisher, Black-headed Gull and Coot! However there have also been more exotic and unfamiliar species to test my ID skills as well such as Brown-eared Bulbul, Vega Gull, Japanese White-eye, Japanese Tit, Eastern Spot-billed Duck and Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker.

Tree Sparrow

Black-headed Gull

Grey Heron

Pintail

Dark-headed Thrush

Japanese White-eye in the Plum blossom

Japanese White-eye

White-cheeked Starling

Brown-eared Bulbul

Large-billed Crow

Eastern Spot-billed Duck

Vega Gull

During our time in Tokyo we visited the National Museum (which even had a small Egyptian collection), various Temples and the Tokyo Skytree while also enjoying the food and drink and observing a very different culture to ours.