Japan 2009: Flight Day

We didn’t do much yesterday, since we were so tired from our flights. Aside note: both my flight and Mary and Steve’s flight had rocky landings, and I spotted a pile of wreckage off to the right of the runway after we finally touched down (it’s a little nerve wracking to hear the stewardess say “now....now....why hasn’t he touched down yet). After passing through the quarantine checkpoint (they did not take my temperature after all) and receiving my bright yellow “disease free” paper, I waited at the baggage claim for Steve and Mary who landed shortly after me. We headed through customs, hit up the international ATM, and made train reservations with our Japan Rail passes. With that out of the way, we grabbed tickets on the local train from Narita to Tokyo and were on our way. My first impression was that I loved the train cars - cleaner and better designed than the subways in NYC - plus I can reach the handles! I always had problems on the subway if it was crowded and I couldn’t get to one of the vertical poles, but not with these lower bars and the handles! 

The train ride was long. We went through some rural areas before we hit the outlying parts of Tokyo, and the vegetation and fields were really pretty. The vegetation seems to grow incredibly thick - I noticed the trees were packed together when the plane was landing, it’s so GREEN! Pretty soon we were traveling through towns, and since it was early evening the train began to fill up with commuters on their way home from work and teenagers on their way home from school. It was weird to see so many well dressed people in quarantine masks. I thought it might just be going on at the airport, but many were wearing them on the trains as well. We made it to Shimbashi Station, and took the pedestrian underpass to Shiodome and found our hotel. Steve was right, there really are no addresses in Tokyo - everything is found by relation to other things. 

The hotel is really cool! Mary did a great job of finding a place. The lobby is huge (vertically) and our room looks into it from the 8th floor. We headed up to the room and unpacked a little. Steve realized he needed an adapter so we headed back down to Shimbashi station to see if any of the shops had travel or computer supplies. We struck out but we grabbed some food in the process. We came back to the room, and even though it was only 8 or so, we all fell asleep.