Almost 4am Friday here, and we’re wide awake… so how was yesterday you wonder?
The flight to Detroit was short and sweet, and although our layover was lengthy (over 5 hours) looking back it didn’t seem so bad. The airport is large and vaguely interesting, so we explored and ate and played DS (FFCC2) while waiting.
< Omelette
Good thing we did eat as well, since the plane food was swill I wouldn’t feed a dying dog. The 3-shrimp cocktail set a new low for “how dare they feed us that?”
< Ugh (but I ate 2!)
The flight to Japan was unusual for 2 reasons. Firstly, there were very few westerners on the plane (which was a 2 story monster, and very full). Secondly, the last 2 hours or so were AWFUL due to turbulence so bad they had to cancel a meal (small loss probably). I was sitting in my seat fighting off the urge to vomit for almost 2 hours! And yes, this was my first time getting motion sickness on a plane 🙂
We had to fill out a special flu form, and after landing 2 ‘health inspectors’ boarded the plane for what seemed like the least enthusiastic inspection ever. Both of them looked like college students as well, with 1000 places they’d prefer being. However once we disembarked, we noticed that about 99% of our plane was actually continuing to either China or Korea!
Narita airport was DEAD AS A DOORNAIL! JBF – you can appreciate this. The customs and immigration lines were nonexistent (zero wait). We waited zero time for our luggage, and zero time to exchange currency. Compare to previous trips where it may have taken an hour or so between disembarking and getting through customs – here it was 3 or 4 minutes!
I was overjoyed, since I hate airports.
Oh, and here’s a shot of the controls of the buttock-cleaning toilet I used at the airport.
< Clean the buttocks!
We took the fancy electric train Skyliner to Nippori station and walked down to our ryokan. Even at this time (on the train) it seemed unreal that we were here (the whole ease of travel these days can do that…). But KLS was overjoyed to drink her first coffee from a machine.
The second shot is out the window of the train, and shows a typical view of Japan just east of Tokyo. Rice fields intersperced with towns. As you can see it was raining, and will be until Saturday. No worries, since our plans for the first few days include mostly indoor places.
Dinner was McDonalds! We were constrained by the need to eat quickly, and by the fact Yoshinoya was jam packed with salarymen. But the food was good (heck it was ambrosiac!), including KLS Bacon-Lettuce Burger
We then wandered the neighbourhood (JBF, the Ginza shopping street is mostly unchanged, although the clear area to the left of the stairs where the cats used to sit is now a large apartment building!) and laid in vittles for our room fridge. This would include, of course, Mt Dew, Kit-Kats, Chip Stars, Water etc.
Kobe Kotobukiya provided delicious deserts we enjoyed in our room later.
Strawberry On The Shortcake Baby!
The thing in the back left is the icepack they placed in the box to keep the cake fresh during transport!
And here’s some random images, of Evangelion tissues, Apple-Vinegar Kit Kat and the dude that played L in Death Note flogging Diet Pepsi!
The local ambience of this area of Ueno is every bit as beautiful as we remembered. We can’t wait to start exploring the rest of the city again…
< Lovely
That shot is of a shrine (to the left) and a butcher just down the street from our ryokan.
Good luck to you in Japan.
By the way, in the photo called ‘lovely’, do I see a swastica on the street banner?
You see what is called a ‘Manji’. Hitler deliberately inverted a Jewish icon to create the swastika, but even that icon had been used by the Japanese for hundreds of years.
To this day it creates problems when publishers want to translate Japanese manga (comics) into German since when Manji are present (such as the hilt of the major character’s sword in the popular manga Bleach), printing them breaks the law about depicting Swastika that is still apparently in place in Germany.