May 25: Tokyo Arrival

May 25

You know when you are well into your way into the descent to a place you have never been to before (and are excited about visiting)? And you are low enough so that you start to see the foreign roads, the foreign (foreign) cars, the foreign signs, the foreign landscape? I love that. That to me is the "Wow, we're here, isn't this cool?" I freaking love that.

Narita airport is very clean and nice; the hallways you have to go through from the flight to immigration to customs, etc. are long, though the lines are not.

We have to fill out a questionnaire that we don't have the flu. We pass.

Alas, we are not able to go through customs with our "etc." we have brought with us:

Don't worry, we didn't take the cats with us. We are not that obsessed. (Okay, we kind of are. But we don't take them with us on vacation.) They were being well-cared for by our friend Betty. Hi Betty!

(By the way: nice, clean, pleasant, highly functional Narita airport is a marked contrast to LAX, at which we had a 6-hour layover on the return. LAX is like a third-world country in comparison. Actually, take away the “in comparison.” If I have the energy I will get to my LAX rant later.)

We take the airport bus to our first hotel, the Park Hotel, not to be confused with the Park Hyatt. The former we can afford, the latter we can not. Plus it's close to the fish market. And I will be dammed if I am going to Tokyo and not eating sushi for breakfast at the fish market at 6 a.m. More on that in a few.

The bus ride is about 90 minutes. We are trying not to fall asleep. Well, I am. Transportation has lulled me to sleep ever since I was a wee bebe. Narita is far away, yo. I knew that, but still! Far! Sleepy!

We got to our room. It is small but it's fine. There is good coffee (the Japanese looooove their coffee!).

The obligatory "hee hee! Japanese toilets are funny!" photos:

And the view was awesome. Better than the more expensive place we splurged on for our last night. The sun was setting shortly after we arrived at our hotel and it was cool! foreign! giant foreign red ball! in the foreign, humid Tokyo big city hazy sky! Tokyo!

Then we were hungry.

We wandered around found some place to eat nearby – all stations (at least larger ones) have restaurants, and they are often pretty good. We were in an area that I guess would compare to someplace like...the financial district? battery park city? no, wait, it was more active than BPC and the finance, but less like South Street Seaport. kind of a mix, I guess.

We walked back to the hotel (this would begin the first of many Carin/Justin navigation conundrums. Once Carin yielded to Justin’s really, really good talent for reading maps, and once Justin yielded to Carin’s really, really good restaurant karma (whoops, hope I didn’t jinx it, and wait—he kind of already does), all was well in Grooninland.

Slept a sleep deeper than I thought, but then all too soon the wakeup call for 5 a.m. sounded. Why? Fish market time!