Arrival in Japan

We woke up early on Wednesday morning to catch a plane to Dallas, then to Japan. We were able to get first-class only on the short trip to Dallas but it was nice. When we arrived in Dallas, there was pandemonium at the gate. Not sure what was happening, but I think the seat assignments were messed up. They were calling seemingly everyone up to the gate desk for something. Meanwhile Ann and I were waiting to see if we would get on. At one point, the attendants were saying there were two open seats, but they aren’t together. We just wanted to get on the plane, we would take the seats if they weren’t together. They told us we may miss the flight, but then a passenger didn’t show up (thanks Mr. Wong) and we were able to get aboard the plane avoiding a stay over in Dallas.

The flight wasn’t too bad, they had movies on a personal TV in the seat back of each seat, so that helped pass the time. I also read a lot of my book “Musashi” which helped me get excited for the trip. There was a Japan TV special that looked like it would be good, but unfortunately it was only in Japanese, and the only thing it was showing was about elephants at a Japanese zoo.

We arrived 13 hours later at Narita airport in Japan, which is just north of Tokyo. We were very tired and ready to be at Mike and Alicia’s place. Our first challenging experience with Japan was trying to use the phone. We couldn’t figure out how much it costs, or how to dial the 800 number to use our phone card. I was looking at the machine for buying a phone card, and a security guard came up to me and asked if I needed help with anything. Just the first of many times the Japanese were very friendly to us. We also learned quickly how expensive Japan can be when I bought a small coke and juice for 800 yen (about $7.50).

We bought our bus tickets and boarded the bus. While waiting for the bus (and many times during the trip) I was saying to Ann “I can’t believe we’re in Japan!” We planned and looked forward to this trip so much, it was hard to believe we were there. We were both very tired, and I dozed off and on while Ann slept most of the way to Tokyo (about a 2 hour bus ride stopping at about 4 other hotels before ours). My first impression from the bus was the industrial area that we drove through. Not real pretty, and overwhelmingly large. When we drove into the downtown area of Tokyo I was amazed. Such a large city, and so different from any I’ve seen. There was so much to see I had a hard time sleeping on the bus. Strange signs and lots of English phrases that weren’t quite right which we saw many times along the trip. Here’s a good example from later in the trip:



Smile is best makeup
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We arrived at the hotel where Alicia was to meet us. This is the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi which is an area of Tokyo close to Mike and Alicia’s place. This is quite the hotel. Alicia told us that celebrities often stay here, and there’s a movie theater in the building where the Hollywood Premieres take place in Tokyo. As we pulled into the hotel I noticed a rolls Royce and many other expensive cars parked in the valet area. The bell hop started putting a luggage tag on our suitcases and I had to explain to him that we weren’t staying there, just waiting for our sister-in-law to pick us up. Alicia arrived with Jens and Bryce, it was great to see them. Jens and Bryce argued over who would take the suitcases, and they each took one of our suitcases, which we thought was very nice. We took a walk down the street to their place taking in everything along the way. My first impression was how narrow the streets and sidewalks were. Ann mentioned that it looked similar to Europe. We found out how challenging it was to ride bikes around Tokyo because of this:


Narrow sidewalks and streets in Tokyo
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Mike and Alicia live in a beautiful apartment near many of the embassies in Tokyo (we walked by the Chinese embassy on the way to their place). They gave us a tour of their apartment which was around 2000 square feet which is much smaller than their home in Gilroy, CA, but large for an apartment in Tokyo. It was an apartment similar to an American one, but the bathrooms were quite different. Here’s a picture of the hi-tech toilet which has a heated seat, bidet, and two settings depending on how much work you do (if you know what I mean). The controller on the wall comes off and is wireless for reasons I can’t think of. Alicia mentioned it’s good for a practical joke.


Hi-Tech Toilet
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The other difference is the shower room. This room has no toilet, and is quite large in relation to the apartment. This tells me how important baths are to the Japanese. The bathroom has a shower area separate from the tub. The tub has a controller that keeps the water at a certain (hot) temperature, and it automatically fills up the tub to the right level.


Japanese shower and tub room
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Enough about the bathrooms. Alicia made a great dinner for us our first night there which was perfect since we were ready to hit the sack. Mike travels often for work and had some advice for jet lag (Japan is 14 hours ahead of us, so there’s quite the adjustment to be made). He said it was a good idea to get right into the time difference by staying up until your regular bedtime so you won’t get up in the middle of the night. I think we went to bed about 8:30 or 9:00, so we were a bit early, but close. That advice worked well as we were good to go after Mike’s two-day jet lag plan. We slept like logs in their guestroom, and didn’t wake until early the next morning when we made a trip to the fish market.