dianaschnuth

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

Slept 14 hours last night. Spent today unpacking and downloading pics from the memory cards and generally chilling out. Currently saving jpegs to take to work and to post on flickr. Also trying to recover some photos that seem to be lost due to a corrupt memory card. Will post a detailed vacation entry soon.

For now… damn that corrupt SD card, anyway.

So, here we are, using the free internet access on the fourth floor of the Apple Store in Ginza. I already checked my e-mail, and ended up deleting all but three messages, and marking one as spam. I don’t appear to be missing much in the way of internet communication, so that’s cool.

As a side note, the apostrophe on Japanese keyboards is Shift-7. The colon is where the apostrophe should be. How disconcerting.

Quick rundown so far:
Tuesday/Wednesday: Long-ass plane ride. That sucked balls. We were personally met at the airport by a super-polite and super-helpful travel rep. A nice bellhop at the hotel single-handedly moved all of our luggage into our room. Holy crap!
Thursday: Dynamic Tokyo tour. Best tour evar. Got to see gardens and a tea ceremony (got great photos of that), and impressed the server at the barbecue restaurant by asking, “Kore wa nan desu ka?” when I didn’t know what the Japanese sweet potato was. Also got complimented on my chopstick skillz by the same server. Spent a little while in Akihabara afterward, and figured out meal ticket usage at a ramen restaurant. Freaked out the server there by asking, “Kore wa eigo de nanto iimasu ka?” when I didn’t know what the ginger was.
Friday: Parasitological museum. Swear to God. Again, I’ve got pictures. Some of them might not go on flickr because, well… you’ll see. Found a great toy / anime store and got an Anpanman plushie for me and a gift for a little someone back home. Ate a great melon glacé bread thingy from a street vendor. Shopped at Nakano Broadway and got some gifts and other cuteness. Got tired early, though. We plan to go back later in our trip.
Today: We’re heading up to Asakusa later to check into our ryokan before hitting the Sanja Matsuri and shopping the Nakamise Dori, but wanted to hit the Apple Store on the way (mainly for the free internet). And here we are. We’re currently finding where the conveyor belt sushi place is.

OK. I need to go get back to my super-cool vacation. Catch ya later.

Blog entries may be scarce over the next week, as Aaron and I are leaving for Japan tomorrow. I’ll try to blog a little while we’re there, if I happen across any free internet access. In either case, I’ll be bringing back craploads of pictures.

This evening, we drive up to Sheryl’s house in Michigan, to stay the night and leave our car. Tomorrow morning, Sheryl will drive us out to the airport and see us off, and we’ll be on our way to Tokyo.

See you on the flip side… Mata ne!

Aaron’s passport arrived on Monday, at which point we faxed in our order for Ghibli Museum tickets to the JTB (Japan Travel Bureau) office in Manhattan. According to Maiko-san, they were overnighted to us today, so we should have them in hand tomorrow. And that’s the last piece of the pre-planning puzzle to fall into place.

Aaron and I still need to figure out a more detailed itinerary, but we do have our trip roughly sketched out:

Tuesday:
Leave Detroit Airport 2pm local time

Wednesday:
Arrive Narita Airport 4pm local time
Two-hour limo bus to hotel
Dinner (in hotel?)
Commence jet-lag

Thursday:
Dynamic Tokyo Tour
– Tokyo Tower: check out the observatory and the kitchy souvenir shops
– Tea Ceremony at Happo-en Garden
– Lunch at Chinzanzo Restaurant
– Driveby of the National Diet Building
– Photo-op at the Imperial Palace Plaza
– 40-minute cruise up the Sumida River to Asakusa
– Asakusa Kannon Temple
– Nakamise Dori (Avenue) shopping area
– Drive through Ginza shopping district

After tour: dinner somewhere, then watch Japanese TV in the hotel?

Friday:*
Akihabara!
– Super Potato (collectibles)
– Maid Cafe (lunch or snackies?)
– Kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi – lunch or dinner?)
– Hell, we’ll probably visit just about every store there…

Saturday:
Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa – the third largest festival in Japan!
Check out the shops and the festival/parade
Overnight stay in the Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu

Sunday:*
Nakano Broadway – a giant otaku mall in Nakano
Maybe check out the Harajuku girls?

Monday:
Ghibli Museum in Mitaka

Tuesday:
Breakfast, check-out
Limo-bus back to Narita Airport
Depart Tokyo around 4pm local time
Arrive in Detroit around 2pm local time, same day

We still have to fit in a few more definite things, like the Ramen Museum south of Tokyo, and we still need to be sure we have everything marked in our handy-dandy bi-lingual Tokyo atlas. We obviously have some more time to fill in, and the asterisks on Friday and Sunday mean that we might swap our Akiba and Nakano days around, since we’ll be closer to Akiba after spending the night in Asakusa, anyway.

Oh, and as a cute illustration, allow me to show you our neighborhood-for-a-week:

Distance from Tokyo Prince Hotel to the nearest 7-11: one-third of a mile.

Let me know if you don’t know WTF I’m talking about with some of our itinerary… it’s getting late, and I’m getting lazy with the linkage. 🙂

OMFG Japan! *head asplodes*