Mark and Liz's Excellent Adventures: April 12-13: Traveling and 1st Day in Japan

First of all, this is something I swore I would never do - start a blog. However, after our recent trip to Japan we decided that blogging about each day would be the easiest way for friends and family to get details about our experience. Mark and I alternated writing in a travel journal each day, and we will be transcribing it onto this blog. There is probably more detail than you want, so feel free to just skim and look at the pictures.

SO HERE IT GOES...

Well, our journey started out with a flight to Chicago, where we spent the night. We stayed in a hotel called the Garden Hotel which was cheap (and it showed!) and had free airport shuttle. According to our taxi driver the next day, it used to be one of the premier hotels in Chicago, but due to neglect it was in pretty bad shape. Scariest shower outside of Peru I've ever used. I felt that the water knob was about to fall off, and it was just in bad shape. The sheets were so old they just grabbed at your clothes. The best part was their continental breakfast, consisting of coffee and a gigantic stack of packaged Ho-Ho's. I laughed when I saw it. I really wanted a picture but when we came back with the camera, they had put the Ho-Ho's away. Needless to say, we got a much better breakfast at a nearby diner.

Then came time for the big long flight. It was, well, long. Luckily we had individual video panels on the back of each seat which helped to pass the time. The flight attendants also stuffed us with food. We had two hot meals plus a sandwich in-between. Thirteen hours is a long time to be cramped in a plane. Our neck pillows, eye masks, and the noise cancellation headphones that I got from Mark's mom helped a ton! There was daylight for our entire flight which was pretty crazy.

Mark happily riding his first train in Japan.

We both started to get pretty excited when we began our descent into the Narita Airport, about an hour outside of Tokyo. My biggest surprise as I looked out the plane window was seeing golf courses. I didn't really expect to see any golf courses during our stay, and there were 5 or 6 that we saw during our descent. (sidenote: Those were the only ones we ended up seeing during our trip.) Mark's biggest surprise was how many cherry blossoms he could actually see from the air. Then we made it through immigration and customs without a problem, and we even made it all the way to our hotel in Tokyo without getting on the wrong train! Mark was really, really, excited to ride the trains. Along the way to the hotel, here are the observations I made:

About one in four Japanese people wears a surgical mask. While in our society that is laughable, in Japan it is socially accepted.
I didn't realize the Japanese drive on the left side of the road. What that means for us is that all the people naturally veer to the left when walking on the sidewalk/in the train stations. That's really hard for us to follow.
We happened to be headed to our hotel at the end of the business day. The Japanese dress much more formally than we do for work. Almost every man we saw was in a suit with a white shirt and tie. The women were mostly in business suits as well-white shirts, skirts (much more common than dress pants), and matching jackets.

Yup, this was our room. This is a "double bed," although to us it seemed more of a twin bed + 4 inches. Also note how tired I was.

Mark can touch both walls!

When we got to our hotel, we were pooped. As expected, the hotel room was teeny tiny and had no A/C. The unexpected was that the window in our room was not designed to open. The room felt really muggy, especially since we were sweaty and nasty from traveling and carrying luggage around all day. That made our decision on whether or not to go out that night pretty easy. We headed to Akihabara, which was only one train station away. The particular train line we were on didn't accept our rail pass, so we had our first test at buying tickets from the machine, which we passed successfully. Akihabara is the area of Tokyo that sells tons of anime and electronics and it is all lit up at night. It was fun just walking around and taking in the sights. Here are our observations from Akihabara:

Tons of vending machines (which I hear is the case everywhere in Japan). There were restaurants where you use a vending machine outside to select and pay for your food from the plastic food displays and then you pick it up inside.
There was an entire store full of claw machines you could play to try and grab the prizes. Claw machines and nothing else.
There were teen girls on just about every corner "cosplaying" and handing out fliers. Cosplay is a word that Mark taught me a week or so before the trip which basically means that you dress us as anime characters.
There was a pretty river (I have no idea its name) that ran right through the middle of the city.
There was an arcade packed full of Japanese men in their business suits playing video games. That was a pretty funny sight.
There were train tracks built on the roofs of shops. Of course Mark is the one who noticed that.