Day 1: The Journey to Japan

Leaving the US

Today, September 17 (Tampa, Florida time) we left for Forth Worth International Airport in Dallas, Texas. Upon take-off I snapped some pictures of the view from my window seat.

Sara and I were separated by a few rows for the short trip to Dallas and I was accompanied by two middle-aged people, one lady and one guy. They did not know each other, but my goodness did they talk the entire time. The lady seriously talked the entire 2:45 minute flight and every conversation was about her travels all over the world. I was convinced she’s been to every country at least once. She did mention she helped set up a new government branch/department after a coup, or some other form of revolution in Africa at some time. I can’t remember where that was though. Needless to say, she worked for the US government employee.

Sara and I have never been to Dallas’ airport and once we got there we were amazed at how large it was. We thought the monorails in Tampa were cool, but once we got into Dallas’ we learned these were the big boy monorails. These things had to be going 35-40 mph and I swear I heard the voice overhead say, “hold handrails firmly…now approaching light speed!”

Anyways, we had a quick lunch, then made our way to the check-in kiosk to have our boarding passes printed for our flight to Narita. Once we had that squared away we just relaxed for about an hour as all the other passengers began arriving. As we were loading onto the plane I grabbed a quick shot of our new transporter for the next 13+ hours.

The plane was really nice and really spacious, as far as planes go. When we boarded there were actually two jet bridges to load passengers quickly into the two aisles. The plane was a Boeing 777 and sat 3 by 4 by 3 people abreast. The plane also had some neat lighting with color changing LEDs, but they were only on at certain times during the flight. Mostly, the atmosphere was dimly lit and relaxing.

Each seat was equipped with a touch screen TV that had games, movies, and books on it. You could also look up all the flight statistics such as airspeed, arrival time, outside temperature and altitude. Speaking of which, when we got to about 30000 feet the temperature was -50F outside and when we got over Alaska it was -75F! The plane was fairly cool and we were provided blankets which definitely were welcomed. To pass the time we dozed on and off and watched movies. I got through the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and I have some movies picked out for the return flight.

Arriving in Japan

When we arrived in Japan, we were taken through customs, which was a very painless process. There were many different roped rows for people to go into depending on their nationality and reason of visit. Sara and I went in the line for “foreign passports”. With about 50 or so people ahead of us we were through the checkpoint in about 10 minutes. Customs in Japan took our photos as well as our index fingers’ fingerprints. Beyond that, not much more was required other than two short documents stating pretty much exactly what is in your passport, how long you are staying and if you had any articles to declare.

Next, we went to the baggage claim where we retrieved our luggage and then we were lost. We knew we had a meet-and-greet with a Japanese citizen to help us get our rail pass activated and see us to our first train. When I say lost here, I mean this is nothing compared to the lost/level of confusion we obtained in Shinjuku’s train station (more on that in a bit). We eventually made our way back to where there was a huge mass of people just standing about not doing a whole lot. We saw another set of checkpoints and as we approached a japanese customs agent motioned us forward, asked if we had anything to declare and checked our passports and moved us along.

We then saw our meet-and-greet contact. She was a well dressed lady in a traditional flight attendant looking suit. She was very soft spoken, but knew english fairly well and was extremely nice. She helped us activate our rail passes, which I will discuss in a later post, and then she gave us our fist train tickets walked us to the gate of the train station and we parted ways. As we walked through the gate to the train station, we turned and gave her a wave goodbye, then she left.

We walked downstairs to the train terminal and awaited our train to Tokyo proper, specifically the Shinjuku station. The train arrived promptly at 18:19 and it was about 1.5 hours into Shinjuku.

Once we got off the train we had brief instructions on where to go, but with the bustling of thousands of people running here and there and most of the signs pointing to various train lines and connections, we thought we were following the right signs to the exit, but alas we definitely did not.

We went up a flight of stairs to find we were stuck in an area with connected trains and small pastry shops. Every direction required a ticked to move on, so we figured this can’t be right, we don’t have a ticket for those plus we need out not onto a train. We headed back to where we started from to see if we missed any signs…sure enough we did. Instead of going up the stairs where we did we had to continue further along the train platform. We then went up another flight of stairs and this time we ran into masses of people. We followed the signs to the south central exit and then the signs disappeared. We were watching people come in and out of the gates, but all that were leaving were using the tickets, so we figured they were boarding another train. Finally, we decided that must be the way out as that’s where the exit signs ended so we passed our tickets through the machine and exited. Voila! done, japanese lesson #1 learned.

We exited the station out onto the street, where just hordes of people we running every which way. We needed to find a taxi, or we could walk as our hotel is very close to the station. We saw a few taxis around, but we weren’t able to reach them. Then we were thinking, “where the heck do we hail a cab?” Well, we turn around and literally right behind the pole we were standing against was blocking the taxi sign. We got in the taxi showed him our hotel’s address, which was in japanese and with a quick, “yes” from the driver we were off. We reached the hotel after about 5-10 minutes which would’ve taken probably 3 minutes were it not for the mass amount of people crossing the streets.

When we got to the hotel I gave him 1000 yen for the 730 yen tab, and he gave exact change back and gestured for no tip. Sara then told me there’s no tipping for anything in Japan, and it feels strange yet liberating at the same time.

We entered the hotel and checked in and were in our room within about 10 minutes. We found a vending machine (they are notorious here in Japan, I will be sure to get some pictures of them and discuss them in another post as well) bought some drinks and showered up and now I’m writing this post at 12:30am Japan time.

I have one last picture for this post and that’s of the all-in-one bathroom. It has a shower/tub, drain in the floor and a high-tech toilet that beeps when you sit down and stand up. Not sure what it’s doing, but it’s got a suction like a black hole. We will definitely be highlighting the bathroom in another post to really show the uniqueness of it, so stay tuned.

That’s it for this post, tomorrow we go on a tour of Tokyo, we’ll be taking a lot of pictures and we will have a new post up tomorrow night. Talk to you then.

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