dianaschnuth

We learned something about Japan on Thursday morning. Something important, but something that no one happened to mention to us in preparation for our trip.

Sunrise is around 4:30am.

Since we’d crashed out at 7pm local time, and the sun beamed in through the shears at 4:30am, we ended up being wide awake at 5am after a long and healthy ten hours of sleep. Since the hotel restaurant downstairs didn’t open until 7am, we decided to take a walk around the block, to familiarize ourselves with the new neighborhood.

I got to compare the mental image of my Google Maps exploration of our new ‘hood with the reality of where everything was and how to get there. We walked past the Tokyo Tower, past the Tokyo Prince Park Tower Hotel, and past Shiba Koen, where a group of adults appeared to be doing some early-morning Tai Chi (or some similar Japanese internal martial art). It was peaceful and smelled like spring.

Then it started raining.

We hoofed it back to the hotel (which, luckily, wasn’t far), went up to our room and dried off, then went down to breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants.

The restaurant cashier didn’t speak as much English as the front desk staff had, and we had a little communication problem as we came in to breakfast. I got to use the first of many useful Japanese words and phrases: Wakarimasen, meaning (in this context) “I don’t understand.” Eventually he simply told us, in English, “two people,” and the price for each of us, which was roughly 2000 yen apiece (a little less than US$20). Yep, the hotel breakfast buffet was a little pricey. In retrospect, we figured out that he was asking us our room number, so we could charge the meal to our room.

Breakfast was good, if expensive, and we had a fantastic view of the private hotel gardens. There was rice, miso soup, tamago (sweet omelettes), some sort of roe, various fish, some sort of stew, and lots of other good food that we didn’t have the balls to ask what it was. 🙂

After breakfast, we paid the confused cashier, went back up to the room and gathered our things for the all-day bus tour…

…which I will blog about tomorrow. In the meantime, you can view the flickr photos of Day 2, if you want some spoilers.

Previously – Japan Trip, Day 1 | Next – Day 2, Part 2: Tokyo Tower and Happo-en Garden

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.