The First Day In Japan – Tokyo

I’m writing this up in the lounge area of the hostel at 6am of day 2. Me and my sister arrived yesterday morning and this post is documenting the journey here, and day 1. Pretty jetlagged but I think I’ll get over it quick.

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The Journey

The flights to Japan consist of two – one hop to Heathrow, then the full fat flight to Japan from there. I flew to Heathrow the day before, and just as well – my sister was taking a connecting flight on the same day as the long one and she ended up missing it due to delays! I ended up having to take the second leg alone. But it wasn’t too bad in the end, British Airways put her on the next flight only a couple hours later. Apparently they radio’d the pilot on her first flight mid air to let her know!

Here are a few snaps from Heathrow:

And some shots on the long plane journey to Haneda

Near the end of the flight I looked at the flight path and realised why this one was taking longer than usual.

And just before the final approach, I got my first couple snaps of Japan:

After touching down and going through immigration, I headed straight to the 7 eleven and got myself a victory Pocari Sweat drink and tuna mayo onigiri. The following 2 hour wait for my sister consisted of me aimlessly wandering around departures at approximately 0.7 miles per hour looking at all the shops and food. The observation deck was pretty cool too, and there were lots of plane otaku wandering about – something you don’t see much elsewhere.

At last, my sister arrived. We strapped on our packs, and set off on the monorail to our hostel.

Getting to the hostel

We got to the hostel a couple hours before check-in, and there was no-one manning the desk. So we decided to walk to the nearby park to chill and get something to eat.

My sister stayed with the bags while I went to the nearest 7 eleven. I got some sandwiches, some yummy tofu rice ball things and a bunch of drinks. After the cashier scanned my items they muttered something in Japanese at me and I was like “huh?”. I looked up and realised that the cashier was the least Japanese person ever, a Caucasian bloke with a big bushy beard. He repeated, in perfect English this time, “would you like a bag?” I responded cheekily with “You don’t look very Japanese”. We had a chuckle and a chat and he was a really nice guy. It turned he was French and he’d actually heard of Jersey – the little island I’m from. He said he’d see me around and I headed back to my sister waiting for me in the park. That’s the first interaction I’ve had with a cashier in a Japanese convenience store that wasn’t Japanese. Not something you see every day here.

We devoured our food and headed back to the hostel to rest and recuperate. I had a much needed shower and clean-up and despite the jetlag, we felt great. So we decided to head to Akihabara which was a few stops and like 90p on the metro away.

Akihabara

After reaching Akihabara, we passed by the Namco arcade and debated whether to go in or not. We eventually caved and headed in. The first couple of floors were all claw machines. Kath had a few goes but was unsuccessful 😦

The next floor up was dedicated to rhythm games – but it might as well have been the taiko floor. Probably half of the space was purely taiko machines. Kath and I played a few rounds and me being an ex-drummer, I had a ton of fun.

The last floor was the gatcha section and was absolutelly packed with ball machines. Kath spotted a one with these super cute bags and decided she needed one.

After all that we wandered around some electronic stores so large and filled with so much stuff that you would never find in the UK. While Kath was hunting for a cheap kindle, I spent far too long nerding out in the mechanical keyboard section and vowed to myself that I would pick up an R3 Topre keyboard before I leave.

We headed back to the hostel at around 9pm after having some rather interesting seafood-based ramen, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

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And so here we are. I only slept for about 6hrs but I slept better than I thought. Now it’s 7am and I’m waiting for Kath to wake up so we can decided what to do today. See you in the next post 🙂