Day One: Getting There

Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.

As I sit typing this, I am looking out the window of my teeny-tiny hotel room at a fantastic view of some of the skyscrapers in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.  It all feels very surreal to me.  That's gotta be either because I imagined this day for so long, or more likely because it is 6:30 AM on Monday Morning back home (8:40 PM here in Tokyo), and I haven't slept since about 8:00 AM last Saturday.

Yeah, I just dozed off in mid sentence there, so I'm gonna chalk fatigue up as the cause. 

Anyway, our flights went well.  The flight from O'Hare to Narita was definitely an endurance test.  They fed us three meals (Choice of pot roast or chicken and noodles, then later a bowl of ramen that the flight attendant filled up with hot water for you, then just before we landed the choice of a lasagna or a turkey and swiss sandwich) and showed us five movies.

Okay, I'm really tired.  I'm gonna have to finish this tomorrow.

*UPDATE*  Sorry about that.  It's now 6:30 on Tuesday morning and I'm feeling well rested, so let me continue.

The five movies they played on the plane were two lame recent Matthew Broderick movies, including one with Helen Hunt and Bette Midler and another co-starring Alan Alda as a crazy old man.  They also showed Speed Racer, Kit Kitteridge, and Hancock.  During all of this the stewardesses brought around drinks periodically (I had hot green tea twice and water the rest of the time) and strangely enough, occasionally pushed by a cart trying to sell duty-free alcohol, tobacco and perfumes to us.

Nearly everyone on the plane slept most of the time, and most of the passengers were Japanese, Taiwanese, or Korean.  I did spot two or three white people who were obviously traveling to TGS (Tokyo Game Show).  At the end of the twelve hour flight Erin and I strained to see anything out the window, but it was so overcast that we couldn't see anything until literally seconds before landing.

Our experience at Narita airport was unbelievable simple.  First we were funneled through an area where a device collected both of our index fingerprints digitally and photographed our faces.  Then we collected our baggage, which had already been taken off the carousel and lined up neatly.  We put our luggage on a cart and pushed it to the customs area.  This is the area where we were worried about running into difficulties based on medicine that Erin takes.  Here's the entire conversation we had with the gentleman:

"Why are you coming to Japan?"
"Vacation."
"How many days will you be staying?"
"Eleven."
"Okay.  Enjoy your visit!"

That was it.  They didn't even glance at our luggage.  A girl with a cute young Labrador did come by and let it sniff our bags, but that was as close to an inspection we received.

I then took all of the cash that Erin and I had on us (about $750) to the currency exchange counter, filled out a small form, handed the money through a window to a woman who showed me a number on a calculator to which I nodded in approval, then handed me a dish full of strange bills and coins.  They also gave me a little origami crane as a gift.  After that, Erin and I bought tickets for a Limousine Bus ride to our hotel.  We stood and watched other buses come and go for about thirty minutes until our scheduled ride (the 4:20 bus) arrived.  The bus itself was nice and quiet with large windows to watch the scenery go by for the 70 or so minutes it took to get to our hotel.  A woman's voice came over the intercom and explained several things in Japanese and then in English.  She was clearly Japanese, yet she spoke English with a British accent.  One of the things she said that made me chuckle was, "passengers are reminded not to use their cell phones as it annoys the neighbors."

Erin did start feeling a bit ill before we arrived, mainly due to lack of sleep, but got better as soon as we got off the bus.

We checked into our room -- Room 1330 at the Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku -- and brought up our luggage.  I fully expected the room to be small, but this thing is tiny.  I've seen larger dorm rooms.  It was like playing a game of Tetris to figure out how to place our luggage so that the bathroom door would still open.  There isn't even a closet...just a rack with five hangers on the wall near the door.  I had to move a mirror to the floor to have a place to set up this laptop.

Here's the obligatory Japanese tourist story about the toilet.  The toilet in our room -- like every other hotel and domestic toilet in Japan -- will shoot warm water on your rear.  It's a surprisingly good shot.  Let's move on.

We got the computer set up on the free internet without much trouble, so I called my mother (even though it was 4:20 AM in Ada) as she had asked me to in order to let her know we were safe.  At this point we needed something to eat, so in spite of our almost mind-altering fatigue we decided to head out and explore the neighborhood.

We walked down to the local AM/PM, a convenience store chain ("combini" in Japanese) that is fairly ubiquitous in Japan.  There were several business men inside standing with their faces to the wall.  Upon entering we realized they were all reading manga off the rack without buying it; a practice that in the US would get you told, "Hey, buddy, this isn't a library" to which you would of course respond, "Okay, I'll talk louder then." 

At the counter they had the standard hot boxes full of fried foods, but these were mostly full of strange and wonderful Japanese treats (with the exception of the "American Corn Dog") including steamed buns filled with meats and pickled plums and other things I could not identify.  We did not buy anything on this visit, and moved on.

Down the street further we were greeted by an area full of the flash and neon Tokyo is famous for (since Japan doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time, it was already dark by now).  We saw a store called "Lumine" which Erin recognized as being a department store, so we went inside.

Japanese department stores are much more closely related toa mall than they are to Dillards.  In the eight or so floors there are two devoted entirely to restaurants and others devoted to clothing, housewares, books, etc.  I found two Dragon Ball Z books I didn't have and decided to buy them.  When I approached the counter and they were rung up, I handed my money to the cashier who promptly put the bills down in a tray that I should have put them in, and then picked up the tray.  He returned my change to me in the same tray.  I have since discovered that this is the way things are paid for almost everywhere in Japan.

The cashier said something to me that I didn't understand, but looked as if he were asking me if I wanted a sack for the books.  I said "yes", after which he immediately pulled out a piece of wrapping paper and started to gift wrap the books.  I quickly said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry," at which point he stopped, put the books in a sack, and taped it shut.

We gave up on eating at any of the restaurants in Lumine, feeling a bit ill from lack of sleep, and were worried that we couldn't even order correctly at McDonalds (Erin has to have her burgers "plain and dry", after all) so we went back to the AM/PM to get some food.  I bought an onigiri (I've always wanted to try one since SonGoku seems to love them) with a filling unknown to me and Erin ordered a dish which I had translated as being "Meato Sausu Spaghetti".  They gave us a little stick with the number 10 and a hand-made head of some cute animal on it.  I remembered from Dragon Ball that 10 is "juu", so I listened for someone to say something including that number.  It worked.  We got our food and headed back to the room.

Erin couldn't identify some of the ingredients to her spaghetti sauce, but she loved it.  My onigiri turned out to have salted raw salmon for the filling and it was also fantastic.

At this point Erin took a bath while I typed the first part of this blog entry, then I took a quick one myself and fell immediately asleep upon hitting the bed.

Comments

[Samantha]

Sounds amazing!!! Have fun guys!!

[Carrie Carter]

If you go back to Japan and fly into Narita, take the NaritaLEX into Tokyo. IT's faster and costs the same as the Airport limobus and it's always cool to ride a train. In fact, going into the JR Rail office at the airport and get the LEX Suica card combo. Suica card is for all subways and buses in Tokyo. Pretty awesome.