Tokyo, Day 1: Arrival

The inside of a Tokyo subway train.

For some reason, the internet provider at my hostel is not working. It will, however, let me have 10 minutes “trial” so I’ll use that to post this. It’s going to be a fairly bare-bones description. I was a bit grumpy and frazzled so I’ll post the pictures and insights in a follow-up.

As anyone who travels to Asia more than once can tell you, doing so makes for a VERY long day. My whole day, starting from my 4:00 AM departure to the airport and ending with my current 6:00 PM-ish crash time (in Tokyo Time), I have been awake and in the air for the greatest part of 24 hours.

I found out that my flight to Dallas WAS in fact cancelled, but I got re-routed through New York, so it didn’t make much difference. I met some really friendly people on the plane between New York and Tokyo, the philosophy being: if you’re going to spend 14 hours with these people, may as well be friendly. One of them is a modern dance teacher in Korea (she’s white), and she’s married to a Japanese man. Sounds like me in a past life! The airline food was, well, airline food. But we got here in one piece, and I made it through customs (though I had made the nearly fatal mistake of tearing the Customs Declaration form on the pre-perforated lines right before the customs lady got to tear it herself).

So, you may be asking, what did you do once you got to Tokyo? Go sightseeing? Pass out and die from jetlag and exhaustion? Celebrate your ability to drink legally? No, what I did was even more fun.

After arriving in Tokyo, I got started attempting to navigate by myself, in the cold (it was lightly snowing when I got here, but that’s stopped I think). And I failed miserably. I rode the train too far, had to backtrack, switch trains, and ask many a Japanese person if he spoke English. Thankfully, many of them do. I had to bother several more Japanese people about where to find my hostel. Then I got to try out the new bathroom when I spent twenty minutes hunched over the toilet with a nosebleed. [Random fact: the toilet seats are heated]

I will add another irrelevant (irreverent? I always get them confused) aside: one of my hostel roommates has managed to convince me that Spaniards can be very attractive.

I’ll post some pictures when I get a chance to take them without looking like a crazy stalker… hostel photos, of course.
I think it’s time to sleep now. Night everyone!