Japan, Day 1, Tokyo
Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 16, 2014
Even the plane ride was different. First, it was real hard on my backside. I managed to watch 3 movies en route, including The Monuments Men, Chef (huge Favreau fan ever since Swingers) and probably my 5th watching of 50 First Dates just because I like Drew Barrymore. I flew United and they fed us 3 meals on the plane and served numerous rounds of drinks. I opted for club soda. I was determined to stay awake as long as possible so that I could adjust to sleeping at night in Japan.
For dinner I had a choice between pasta with spinach and fried chicken with noodles. The “fried chicken” was actually chicken nuggets, which is a dubious use of the term “fried chicken” but it wasn’t half bad. The lights were shut off on the plane for much of the flight and I realized that was because it was nighttime in Japan and they were making it easier to adjust. I wonder if they will do the same thing on the way back to the states?
We flew much further north than I expected. We were over the southern part of Alaska at one point, flew over the Aleutians and then clipped a portion of Russian airspace from the looks of it. Luckily they decided to not launch any missiles at us.
Kris had packed us some serious food for the trip. She went to Costco and went nuts on, well, nuts. We had cashews, almonds, peanuts, and also 3 large bags of beef jerky. I also had a box of 12 protein bars in my backpack so that we could have a quick breakfast each morning before heading out. The airline handed us the customs form and it appeared as if the nuts and jerky might qualify as restricted items. We asked the stewardess about this and she said she’d seen nuts confiscated before. In retrospect I may have needed to clarify the nuts to which I was referring. In any case, after we landed and walked through an almost deserted wing of Narita International Airport, we went through immigration where they stamped our passport. So friendly! Wolfgang remarked about the politeness of our first encounter.
After speeding through immigration, we went to get our bags. They changed the carousel on us so after waiting 30 minutes with our bags nowhere to be found, Wolfgang correctly suggested we were in the wrong place. We went two carousels over and there were our bags sitting there with everyone else having gathered their bags and left. We grabbed the bags and went through customs. At the suggestion of the stewardess, we listed all of the items previously mentioned. We ate two of the three bags of jerky on the plane thinking it would be confiscated. The customs official looked over my declaration form, asked me a couple clarifying questions and let us go through. No searches, no nothing. I liked this place already.
My friend John told us after we went through customs to look for the orange sign for Limousine Bus service. His wife had made reservations for us at The Hotel Metropolitan and the bus left at 1:45. It was 1PM and so far everything was perfect. Jinx. I went to buy the tickets and they asked for which Hotel Metropolitan. This was an unexpected development. I wasn’t aware there was more than one. I tried to Skype John but he wasn’t online. I got the tickets to the hotel in Tokyo, in Ikebukuro. Turns out I made a good guess. John finally Skyped me and spoke with the clerk in Japanese and told me we were good. We waited until 1:45 and the bus arrived promptly. Apparently trains and buses run on time in Japan. Not surprising considering this is the home of Lean Six Sigma. I was already impressed. The porters bow to you on the bus and then they bow to the bus driver. The cars are smaller too, likely because of necessity. Less people have them and the people themselves are not as large as us bulky Americans. I didn’t see one SUV from the airport to the hotel.
The bus ride to the hotel was awesome. It takes about an hour and while everyone has heard that Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world, that doesn’t begin to describe it. Wow is all I can say. It is huge. There are waterways everywhere, skyscrapers for miles and miles, and very few houses. They dry their laundry on the balconies of their apartments, and they don’t discriminate on the types of garments either.
We got to the hotel and the service was nothing short of amazing. The female bellhop took us to our room and unloaded the bags. You don’t tip in Japan. Wolfgang wanted to tip anyway but I talked him out of it. More to come in Day One – Part 2.
-Mike
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