Japan Trip, Day 1

All righty… Time to recap the Most Awesome Trip that was our Japan Vacation 2007.

On Monday night, Aaron and I drove up to Sheryl and John’s house in Wixom for some hot Wii Sports action (and so we could stay there overnight and forego an early morning haul to DTW and a prohibitively expensive parking bill). Tuesday morning, Sheryl was kind enough to drive us and our luggage to Detroit International and drop us off for our Big Adventure.

Getting our boarding passes and going through the security checkpoints was no big deal, even for us Toledo bumpkins who do little to no airline travelling. We checked our luggage, located our gate, chilled for a while, then had some lunch at Max & Erma’s in the airport. Mmm, tortilla soup.

When the time came, we boarded our flight and located seats 60-A and 60-B. However, we failed to pack a bag other than our large overhead-compartment storage carry-on (an error we rectified in our later return flight). The flight out was long and turbulent, and neither of us got much sleep. The airline meals were yummy and cute, although that didn’t really make up for the fact that the airplane ride WAS NEVER GOING TO END. Never.

After thirteen hours, the hell that was the initial flight to Japan finally came to an end, and we disembarked at Narita Airport. We successfully located our luggage, dealt with some nice customs agents who basically waved us through and welcomed us to Japan… and were met by a Tonichi Travel Representative holding a sign that read, “Mr. and Mrs. Schnuth.”

O.o

Talk about personalized service.

Our travel rep got our limousine bus tickets for us, helped us out with our luggage, gave us our itinerary and vouchers, and stayed with us until the limo bus arrived. Excellent service.

It took over an hour to get from Narita to our hotel, during which time we got to see Tokyo and the surrounding area, and get used to driving on the left side of the road. When we arrived at our hotel, a cute little bellhop girl in a mauve outfit singlehandedly manhandled our luggage up to our room for us.

(BTW? No tipping in Japan. Otherwise, we would never have let someone take our luggage if we could have helped it.)

I don’t remember even eating dinner. We familiarized ourselves with our cute little room with its awesome view of the Tokyo Tower, then totally crashed out at 7pm.

View photos of Day 1 on flickr | Next – Day 2, Part 1: Breakfast

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