Traveling to Japan: Tokyo Dome City

So, aside from seeing events in the Tokyo Dome and Korakuen Hall, there's actually a lot of stuff to do in the complex that is Tokyo Dome City, and in fact, if your interests are sufficiently broad, you could spend a whole week entirely within the "city walls" without getting bored. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.

Food
There are probably no fewer than 60 places to eat within Tokyo Dome City, and the variety is actually pretty broad. Most of it will be some subspecialty of Japanese food, but there are also steakhouses, Italian pizza places, a sports bar, a bakery, among others. Specific recommendations:

• Generally, avoid eating in the restaurants in the Tokyo Dome Hotel, except for the Sizzler steakhouse, which is about as expensive as you would expect for a steakhouse. I ate at the third-floor buffet for dinner the first night and didn't like very much there, and at 4,000 yen per person, there are better ways to spend your money. People that I talked to were equally unimpressed with the breakfast buffet. I can't imagine dining at the even pricier restaurants on the higher floors. Take a walk outside and eat for less than 1,000 yen.
• The Smart Sushi restaurant on the lower level of the LaQua part of the complex is an all-too-convenient conveyor  belt sushi place, and it's delicious. I ate there three times in 10 days.
• Denny's has good breakfast. Be aware that 納豆 means "natto" (fungus-fermented soybeans) and is served with certain breakfast sets. I liked it, but it's not for everyone.
• There's a ramen place right in front of Korakuen Hall. Good as a default place to eat before a show.

Other than the hotel buffet, I didn't really encounter any bad places to eat in the Tokyo Dome City complex, and most traditional Japanese places were relatively inexpensive.

Entertainment

Did you know that there's an arcade inside this complex? Not kidding. I didn't spend too much time here, but if this is your thing, this could be a time sink. However, if you're looking for this sort of entertainment, you may want to take a short train ride to Akihabara to find even bigger arcades.

There are a couple amusement park rides near LaQua, and yes, weather permitting, they do run in January. The Thunder Dolphin roller coaster was sufficiently fun for just north of 1,000 yen. It doesn't go upside down, but the first drop is quite long, and the roller coaster is fairly tightly constructed, such that certain underpasses don't have a terribly huge amount of headroom and give the sense that you might be decapitated by some parts of the construction. (Yes, it's safe, but when you're going pretty fast, judging vertical clearance is not super-easy, at least for me.) On a brisk 50-degree Fahrenheit day, I chose to forego the water ride, but that looked fun in warmer weather.

Closer to Korakuen Hall, there's a multi-story complex with batting cages, a few more arcade-style games (my brother, who used to do weightlifting, may have nearly broken the grip strength tester), a bowling alley, and, strangely enough, a space museum on the top floor. The initial presentation is in Japanese only, but all of the other exhibits have both English and Japanese text accompaniment. 

Shopping

There's a wide variety of shops, if that's your thing. There's a bookstore near Korakuen Hall, and clothing stores near LaQua. Be aware that finding anything larger than a United States L size may be difficult. If you buy something relatively expensive at a duty-free shop, they may give you some paperwork to show to immigration when you leave Japan; this happened to my brother when he bought some sneakers.

Hotel

The Tokyo Dome Hotel is nominally a pretty pricey place, but by sharing a room with my brother and staying for an extended time, we were able to bring the per-night rate down to something reasonable (around 20,000 yen a night for a triple room). I'm sure that you can find cheaper places to stay reasonably nearby, but for the first time in Japan, we opted for convenience rather than price. There are relatively few rooms with double beds, so book early if that's important to you; we ended up being able to get only a room with three separate beds.

Room service is extremely overpriced, as it is in many hotels. You can opt for a room rate that includes breakfast when you book the room, but it's still pretty expensive, and I recommend eating elsewhere. As I mentioned above, most of the restaurants within the hotel are extremely expensive. One exception to the hotel food sticker shock is that the minibar in the room surprisingly had a decent selection of food and drink at prices comparable to those at the convenience store, so we took advantage of that throughout our stay.

If you stay here, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the myriad ways of entering and exiting the hotel: the first three floors all have useful exits that lead in different directions. The main entrance on the first floor is not the one that you'll want to use to explore the rest of Tokyo Dome City. If you're heading to Korakuen Hall, it's most efficient to take the second-floor side exit, and if you want to get to the Tokyo Dome itself, exiting via the third floor is fastest.

Our room had a programmable safe in it, but it was rather small (maximum mask capacity from experimental experience: three).

The hotel staff does generally speak English competently, so you should be able to check in and out and ask for help without problem. One thing to note is that they will ask you to "settle" (i.e., Japan-speak for "pay") the bill if the total charges incurred (including the room rate itself) reach 115,000 yen, so if you're staying for a while, you'll have to go down to the front desk every few days to take care of this.

I don't think that you need to stay here, but you're going to Korakuen Hall a few days in a row, it does make your life more convenient.