Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 1: Wednesday, Arrival

So, the stars aligned and Erica and I were able to go to Japan for 11 days in early November. We were in Tokyo for 6 nights, then Kyoto for 2 nights, Hakone for 1 night, and back to Tokyo for 2 nights. We had a most excellent time, and thought that our friends would enjoy hearing about it.

Day 1: Wednesday, Nov 7
Arrival. Narita airport was easy to get through. Unfortunately, I couldn't really sleep on the plane, even drugged. Bust, at least the flight was not as bad as UAL to Australia in 2001. AA really does have more room in coach! :) For a 6 foot tall person, it makes a difference on a 10+ hour flight. Of course, Sydney is a bit farther than Tokyo (I think that was 12+ hours). I was disappointed that it was dark when we landed, as I couldn't tell what stuff was like outside. The train ride was pretty easy to Tokyo and the subway was fairly easy as well, even after having been awake for more than 24 hours. I was really surprised. More about the subway later.

The hotel (Intercontinental Tokyo Bay) seems more out of the way than we originally thought. It's got a convenient station, but switching to it's line is a PITA. The line that our hotel is on is run by a different company than the train from Tokyo station, and the lines are not always the easier to connect between. Shiodome station is nutty to navigate. However, the hotel is nice, but we got a smoking room :( and the beds are too firm. Staff is super helpful but they could only switch our room to a non-smoking one on the second day. BTW, don't eat at the restaurants here or in the "mall-let" nearby. Also, if you do go to Japan, in general, only eat Japanese food!

On the subway, fares are hard to keep track of, due to distance-basis fare calculations & multiple companies running services. Some of the stations are totally freaking huge and it takes more time to walk through them and find the exit than the train trip actually took. However, with a PASMO or SUICA card (similar to the Charlie card in Boston), things are pretty easy.

Here are some general thoughts.

Some of the things that amuse me:

• the high-pitched voices of women in recordings & TV (ads, subway, tv shows, etc)
• that people are paid to stand around and greet people in stores
• pocari sweat
• people don't know how to use a camera w/ a viewfinder (they keep asking why the screen doesn't work; it does, but my camera's just old!)
• everything talks to you in a woman's voice (escalators, elevators, stores)
• many things have their own jingle (such as the shinkansen train)
• how most of the city is not as crowded as one might think
• people sleep often and everywhere, especially on the subway.
  

Some things that amaze me:

• the food halls in the dept stores
• the awesomeness of the subway
• the safeness of the city
• how the old is so old, and the new is so new, at least compared to Boston

Some things that disappoint me:

• the amount of smoking:
• the way that the little old people push and shove everywhere
• most of the actual consumer technology that we saw was not as high-tech as I expected, nor as cheap
• most of the computers we saw were Sonys
• there wasn't as much variety of things, for the most part; I'll go into detail later

Here are our photos of Tokyo, and here are some photos of random food items.