Day 2: The Imperial Palace and Nijubashi

After our first night in Japan, we didn't feel jet-lagged at all anymore and our enthusiasm was back as well. We began our second day in Japan unhurriedly, first checking out the conbini "Family Mart" which was located right next to the hotel and offered a variety of goods. I bought Melonpan, which - to me - tasted like German cookie dough or crumble cake. So yummy! 

Then, we walked to the Imperial Palace, seeing lots of interesting places and buildings on our way. 

Here, I bought a drink called "Mugi Tea" or something like that, and it tasted horrible (at first)! But after drinking the entire bottle, it was okay. :P 

  

We also found a tourist information center, which reminded us of the fact that we still hadn't bought the grutt pass yet. So we went in and asked in our best Japanese "Gurutto pasu ga arimasu ka?", and the friendly girl behind the counter was really surprised about the fact that we asked her in Japanese. She told us that they didn't sell the grutt pass here and that we could buy it in the facility in which we first wanted to use the pass. She also showed us a sheet with lots of information on it, though we had to admit that we could speak and understand basic Japanese but reading was a problem. She nodded and brought us a sheet with English information on it. She was so nice! :) 

Then, we continued our walk to the Imperial Palace, although we were not sure whether we were still on the right path. 

This was approximately the route we took

Then we finally reached the park area, surrounded by stone walls and moats in which swans were swimming. Here, we took a short break to eat some melonpan.

In the background, you can even see the top of Tokyo Tower.

Then we reached Koukyo Gaien, the large plaza in front of the Imperial Palace, where we saw many tour groups. Here, while we were trying to take a selfie of ourselves on which we were both visible - which was easier said than done -, a Japanese guy (who was probably some years older than us) approached us and asked "Can I take photo?". At first, we thought he wanted to help us and take a photo with our camera of us, but instead, he waved his mother nearer. Then, he placed himself between Chrissi and I and his mother took a photo of the three of us! Of course, we were somewhat perplexed than, but oh well! 

We crossed the plaza and took some pictures of Nijubashi, the bridges there. We had to wait a while until it was our turn, though, because there were many tourists there. 

Afterwards, we sat down on a bench and relaxed a bit before continuing our plans and searching for a metro station, since our next destination was Tokyo Tower. 

Day 1: Our first evening in Tokyo

We had finally made it! 

Or so we thought. When we arrived at the hotel "Horidome Villa" at about 2 pm, the friendly hotel receptionist told us that our room was not ready yet and that we had to wait until 3 pm. Thankfully, though, we were allowed to theoretically check-in, handing over some documents and paying the hotel fee, which was about 30.600 Yen (about 340 Euros according to the exchange rate from August 2012) per person for 12 nights. 

Leaving our luggage behind at the hotel, we took a look at our neighborhood called "Nihonbashi", which is located in Chuo Ward. We were really tired, and the humid and hot air did not help at all, making the one hour waiting time seem like an eternity as the only thing we wanted to do was rest for a bit. Walking along the side streets, we ate our first onigiris and bought our first drinks from a vending machine, something we had seen only in anime and japanese dramas before, not imagining how much we would miss them after our Japan trip. 

By now, we  realized two problems: there were basically no trash bins anywhere (except for those in front of conbini) and there were no possibilities to sit down and rest for a while anywhere in this neighborhood. 

After only 30 minutes of exploring some streets and being too shy to walk into one of the many, many conbini, we were back in front of the hotel. We decided to sit down in the shadow next to a large building across from our hotel. People stared at us whenever they walked past us, apparently never having seen two tired, sweaty gaijin almost dying sitting on the sidewalk before. 10 minutes later, we went to the hotel and - yokatta! - were given the key to our room.

After about 29 hours with barely any sleep, we collapsed onto our bed, which was fairly small, but bigger than expected - 120cm, called a semi-double bed. It was big enough for us, really. The hotel itself made a good first impression: it was clean, modern and the staff was really friendly, helpful and made an effort to understand our poor Japanese language skills; the staff's English was fairly good, though. :) Inside the hotel were apparently also 2 restaurants, which we didn't try because they were rather expensive. 

Our room itself was also clean, but really small, although I guess that was normal for Japanese standards. The bathroom seemed to be the standard bathroom in Japanese (business) hotels, since we'd seen it on lots of other hotel websites. To me, it felt like a closet, though. 

For a while, we just lay there, tried to unpack a bit (which was actually impossible in such a small room) and wrote emails to our families back home, the latter only possible thanks to the hotel staff giving us the correct adapter for charging my laptop, since the ones we brought to Japan didn't fit. At that point, I have to admit that my previous enthusiasm about coming to Japan and finally fulfilling this dream of mine was gone all of a sudden, and I wondered whether we were able to have a good time here and come back home safely. All of a sudden, even though I had it all planned out months ago and had even refreshed my Japanese language knowledge, I felt so unsure and frightened of this big foreign city and country and the people and the foreign language. There were kanji everywhere, and even though I wanted to read it and understand, I couldn't. Although being able to use the ability to read hiragana and katakana and at least some easy kanji motivated me. Still, I felt really discouraged at that point.

Our messy room :P 

After some power napping (or rather: after attempting to power nap), my unease and fear were, well, not gone, but had decreased, so we went to Akihabara. And really, we went. By foot. :) Since our hotel was located only about 15-20 minutes from Akihabara and we didn't want to spend more money on taking the metro, we thought this would be a good decision. And it was, in the end even though we were fairly tired, since we got to see more of our surroundings. That's something I don't like about the metro or subways in general: you never see the city. 

Akihabara was amazing! Big, bright, loud and crowded; just as we had imagined. 

Though going there in our condition was a bad choice; everything was too bright and too loud and too genki, for me at least. I yearned for a bed and instead, got lost inside Taito Station, which is a  multistory, giant (for me, at least) arcade, in which going up is easy thanks to the escalator, but finding a way out proved to be rather difficult (maybe because we were tired, though). 

Afterwards, we spotted a multistory animate-shop, for manga fans a must! This amazing shop was, however, very crowded and after half an hour, I felt dizzy and wanted to return to the hotel, but couldn't find Chrissi anymore in the crowd. When I finally found her, I assured her that we'd come back on another day, when we weren't as tired as right now (well, I was tired. After having taken a nap, Chrissi was very genki). 

On our way back, we decided to grab something to eat first. There were so many options, but we didn't have faith in our language skills that night, since we were feeling kind of overwhelmed by everything. Therefore, instead of going to a ramen-restaurant or eating at the yoshinoya chain restaurant next to our hotel, we entered the closest Mc Donald's and went for some familiar food. At the end of the first day in Japan, I ate a Cheeseburger and a Chicken Burger (or chikin kurispu as it was called there) in Akihabara. 

Akiba <3 

Nyaruko-san!

And here my expenses on the first day:

Onigiri (at the Sky Market in Narita Airport) = 160 Yen

6 Metro 2-Day Tickets = 5.880 Yen

Keisei Main Line Ticket from Narita to Ueno = 1.000 Yen

Tokyo Metro Ticket from Ueno to Kodenmacho = 160 Yen

Hotel = 30.600 Yen

Drink = 147 Yen

Mc Donald's food = 220 Yen

_________________________________________________________

Total = 38.167 Yen

Stay tuned for the next blog entry! :) 

Tokyo - Here we come!

We were almost there. \(^o^)/ Almost.

Not only was Tokyo still about 70 km away from us, but there was also one hell of a line in front of the immigration counters for foreign visitors. Hesitantly, we got in line and - seeing that this could take hours - wished for our heavy hand luggage to just disappear. Or get to Tokyo on its own. Somehow. But - of course - that didn't happen and we soon had to admit that we were really tired after all. It was really hot and having read so much about how Japanese people love their air conditions I wondered where they kept those when you really needed them. （￣～￣;）

This whole immigration process soon gave us the feeling of an amusement park. Not only because of the small signs that told you that you still had to wait 45 minutes, but also because the excitement and enthusiasm you had when you first got in line was gone really quickly and you began to wonder whether this ride was really worth it. In our boredom, my friend Chrissi and I began to watch the people around us. As wikipedia says, 

"People watching is often an activity that people do to gain a first impression or simply for fun to pass time."

Definitely the latter. 

Anyways, slowly - very slowly - but surely, we got closer to the immigration counters. There were about eight or ten of them, though only three or four were open at first. The airport staff opened another two or three counters later on which helped a little to speed up the immigration process. When it was finally my turn, I went to the counter and handed in my disembarkation/embarkation card as well as my passport. After that, I was fingerprinted as well as photographed (though I'm still not sure whether I should be glad or not that I didn't get to see the photo - I must have looked horrible). 

And that was it. Didn't even take two minutes.

Now that we were allowed to stay in Japan for up to 90 days, we quickly went to fetch our suitcases, put them on luggage trolleys, went through customs and then, we were out. After almost two hours since landing, we were able to leave. Finally! ＼（＾▽＾）／ Our previous excitement was there again and we were one step closer to reaching Tokyo!

But not so fast. First, I - even though I had already changed my euros into yen back then in Germany some weeks ago - went to the currency exchange counter to change the remaining euros I had with me into yen, because some weeks ago, the exchange rate hadn't been that good and I had thought that maybe I'd get a better rate at the airport. And I was right. 

After that, Chrissi had to get some cash from an ATM, but even though we found the English language option, we had lots of problems getting the money. The actual problem was that you could only withdraw 500 euros per day, but we didn't know that and wanted to withdraw 800 euros in yen. And each time we waited for the cash to come out of the machine, all that happened was that a sentence appeared on the display. In Japanese, though. With many Kanji which we didn't know. We then asked a woman from the airport for help, but she wasn't able to help us either, thus Chrissi went off on her own in quest of money. 

ｶﾞ━━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━━ﾝ!!

I was left with our luggage and sat down on a seat next to the small convenience store and waited for Chrissi to come back. But after half an hour, she still wasn't back and I hadn't seen where exactly she went, and with the trolley and our luggage it was hard to look for her as I didn't know where the elevators were located and what if she came back and I wasn't there anymore (where she'd left me)?! O___O Sighing, all I could do was wait. After a while, I started to pace back and forth with the trolley and looked around for the counter that sold Tokyo metro tickets, because you only get those in the airport and we wanted to buy some.

Eventually, Chrissi came back. With cash. Thankfully! 

After that, I quickly changed clothes in the closest restroom (and this one had those stylish modern toilets with loads of buttons) because it was simply too hot for long jeans. Then, we bought our first onigiri in the convenience store and then went to the Tourist Information counter, where we each bought 6 Tokyo Metro 2-day tickets. Even though many people on the internet always discouraged tourists from buying these 2-day tickets and instead recommended buying a Pasmo or Suica prepaid card, the two of us chose the 2-day tickets, because before our journey began we had calculated exactly how often we'd use the Tokyo metro each day and well, according to our plan we'd save some money using these 2-day tickets instead of a prepaid card. 

Originally, we had planned to buy the Grutt-Pass (a pass that gives you free entrance to hundreds of facilities in the Tokyo area) in the airport, but we didn't find the counter and wanted to finally get to our hotel, and thus we went downstairs to the counter of the Keisei Main Line to buy tickets for a train ride to Ueno Station. We chose the cheapest ticket (Limited Express) and shortly afterwards, we were already inside the train, waiting for it to depart.  

Inside the Keisei Main Line Limited Express Train

During the 80-minute ride, we tried to stay awake and distracted us by watching out of the windows where we saw fields and very Japanese looking houses. 

And at some point, we saw the Tokyo Sky Tree appearing and disappearing between skyscrapers, telling us that we were close to our destination. 

It didn't take long then until we got to Ueno Station. Once again, we wished our luggage would just transport itself to the hotel on its own. We clearly had too many clothes and other very useful things with us. And it was so hot!! Of course, we'd known that it would be hot and humid before we started our journey, but still... knowing is different from experiencing it in real life.

In Ueno Station, we followed the signs that would lead us to the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line in order to get to Kodenmachou, the metro station closest to our hotel. First, we had to buy metro tickets at the ticket machine, though, because we wouldn't use the 2-day tickets until tomorrow. A map above the machines showed us the fare from Ueno station to all other metro stations, and since Kodenmachou was only 2 stops away, we had to pay only 160 Yen each. These ticket machines were really easy to operate and they had the English language option, too. 

A little later, we sat in the metro on our way to Kodenmachou, which only took four or five minutes. The only obstacle now between ourselves and the hotel was the staircase that led upstairs to the street. We hadn't seen an elevator, thus we had to carry our suitcases, rucksacks and handbags up the staircase and when we reached the street, we were soaked since it was so hot and humid. 

Oh, how often did I walk along this street in Google Earth's street view before our journey began. And now I was finally standing there myself. For real. And everything looked just like it did on street view, thus I knew exactly which way we had to go in order to reach our hotel. 

And then, five exhausting minutes of carrying our luggage later, we were standing in front of our hotel, "Horidome Villa". 

I was so excited! We did it, on August 22nd we were finally there after hours, days of travelling, weeks and months of planning and booking. 

It was so hot and humid and we were sweaty and tired and hungry and I even felt a little bit sick because of the lack of sleep, but still, at the same time I felt really great. The next days would be so much fun!

So that's it for now! I hope you're looking forward to the following days! Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

~Mina

Conquering The Air (Part 3)

As scheduled, our plane moved to the runway at 1:30pm and took off shortly afterwards. As always, the feeling when the plane starts to speed up and you are pressed into the seat, leaving your stomach some meters behind you, was a mixture of excitement, joy and also a bit of nausea.

 Bye, bye, London!

See you in two weeks!

A few minutes later, we were in the air once again and it was strange to know that even if you slept, when you'd wake up you would still be up there, in the air, above the clouds. We looked out of the window until clouds made the buildings, streets and bridges of London disappear. Which was, like, ten minutes after the take-off. Oh, well. Time to check out the entertainment system. 

Each passenger had their own small monitor installed in the back of the seat in front of them and there was a variety of things to do, watch or listen to. There were several games that you could play alone or with other passengers, for example Battleship or Pacman. Then, there were also hundreds of songs and music albums by different interpreters as well as lots of TV series, news or films, like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Bambi, Tangled or Liar Game Reborn. There was something for everyone. Besides watching movies and listening to music, we were also able to follow the route of the plane, because a map showed our actual location as well as our destination, the time at our place of departure and destination, our altitude, speed and the temperature outside. There was a remote control, but the monitor could also be controlled by touching it. 

As always, it wasn't long until we were served drinks and snacks, which in our case were spicy Thai rice crackers. 

Then, we began watching a film in order to pass some time. And watching films up there was really relaxing, because at home, there were so many things I could do instead of watching a DVD, and that's the reason why I rarely watched one. But in a plane, with almost twelve hours to pass and nothing "useful" to do instead, I could concentrate on the film and enjoy the time. Of course, I also had a novel, my mp3-player and a bunch of other things in my hand-luggage as well as Japanese phrase book, but forget that. Watching movies was just so much more fun when you were sitting in a narrow seat, especially at the window with no chance to stand up without annoying at least two other persons, and thus almost couldn't move. When watching a movie, all you had to do was watch and listen, but you didn't need your hands or feet, which was great because we could just cover ourselves with the blanket that had been provided, lean back against the small pillow and relax. 


After we'd watched the first film, the two of us played Battleship against each other and waited for more food. :D Shortly afterwards, we had to choose between chicken curry and macaroni. I had chicken curry, which was really good - hadn't expected that. My friend had macaroni and they tasted good, too, except for the warm tomatoes. But overall the food exceeded our expectations, and all those bad reviews we'd read about it were proven wrong. At least according to our taste. By now, we were already past Helsinki and were able to see Finland's beautiful lake scenery.

When we'd finished our meal (that I believe was supposed to be our dinner), we'd been in the air for about four or five hours. Almost half-time. Thus, we decided to stand up for a while, walked a bit and explored the toilet. I think standing up and moving on such a long flight is important, no one wants to get a thrombosis after all. 

Back in our seats, we started watching the next film. I watched "Bambi", though I suddenly fell asleep shortly after Bambi's birth and woke up only at the end when he was already grown up. Soon after that, the lights were dimmed in the plane in order to make us sleepy and prepare us for Japan's time zone. By that time, six hours had passed already. Our plane had taken off at 1:30pm GMT, that meant 2:30pm CET and 9:30pm JST, I think. So now, it was already 3:30am in Japan and we'd arrive there at about 9am local time. It really was time for us to get some sleep. 

Which was easier said than done. Only now did I notice how noisy this plane actually was, as conversations ceased and everyone was trying to sleep. I was sitting at the window, and thought that leaning my head against the wall would be comfortable, but oh noes, it definitely was just the opposite. With my ear pressed against the window, it was even noisier than before. And pulling down the window shades didn't help either. Different methods had to be tried!
Usually, watching a film helped me to fall asleep, but the provided headphones weren't comfortable to wear while sleeping. So that wasn't a possibility. I dug out my mp3-player from my laptop bag under my seat and tried listening to music to drown the noise, and I drifted off to sleep only to be awoken again by my mp3-player almost falling out of my hand. I was really tired, so I thought I'd try to sleep without trying any other methods, but falling asleep once again was difficult. Not only because of the noise, but I also had so little room and my friend had decided to rest her head on my shoulder which was not comfortable for me at all. ;) Ah well. Even if I wouldn't be able to fall asleep again, I thought closing my eyes for a while and relaxing would be good, too, and in between thinking about random stuff, glancing at the screen in front of me to check our location and peeking out of the window from time to time, I did in fact sleep for a short while, which was better than nothing, really. 
I still was very tired, but I hoped that my excitement would blow all the fatigue away once we'd be approaching Japan. 

I was really happy when more and more people opened their window shades and sunlight flooded the cabin. We were finally able to talk again without bothering anyone, though my throat hurt even without talking for hours. When most people were awake, breakfast was served. English breakfast, which consisted of one sausage, a single warm tomatoe, some mushrooms, scrambled eggs and bacon, as well as apple slices and juice. 

もう少し... A bit longer...

Looking at the monitor, we noticed that we'd almost reached the Sea of Japan. Our destination was within our grasp. Outside, the blanket of clouds cleared and we were able to see waves. Closer and closer we got and soon, the first Japanese cities appeared on the monitor. Sapporo. Aomori. 

Now we were really, really, really excited. I felt as if I'd already been on the way for a whole week, tired, but very happy. 

Upon reaching the Sea of Japan, the clouds vanished

First, we were able to see an island - Sado Island. 

Sado Island - though not really visible in this photo's size

Then, when we could finally make out the coast and soon flew over Niigata, eager to take photos of everything we saw, disembarkation/embarkation cards were handed out by the stewardesses. We still had more than half an hour until landing, so we ignored those cards for the moment, instead looking out of the window, where we saw mountains, towns, and far away, in the distance, Mt. Fuji. At least we thought it was Mt. Fuji. Or hoped so. :) 

There, far in the distance, was that Mt. Fuji?!

Niigata - in the bottom right corner you can see a part of Niigata Airport

Seeing that we were already close to Narita Airport, we finally filled out the cards, though sometimes we had to ask the girl sitting next to us, who'd been to Japan already two or three times before, for help, even though we'd looked those cards up on the internet before our trip had started. But looking something up in order to see what it looks like and having to fill it out without mistakes are very, very different. But anyways. Filling out those cards wasn't that difficult, we just didn't want to make any mistakes in order to prevent trouble. 

Closer and closer we got to Tokyo, as could be seen on the monitor. Shortly before landing,  announcements were made to switch off all electronic devices, though I wanted to film the landing and thus, hid my camera every time a stewardess passed our row. 

The weather was beautiful. Some clouds, but a really bright blue sky. Lower and lower our plane  sank and we were able to see Japanese trees, rice fields, grass, streets and houses clearly now. 

And suddenly, we'd already landed, safely of course. It took some minutes until our plane reached its gate. 

Since we were in the back of the plane, we had to wait until everyone from the front was outside, which also took a while. But then it was our turn. We walked to the front, noticing that especially the passengers who sat in first class had left behind lots of rubbish, said goodbye to some stewardesses and stewards and finally, for the first time in our life, we were on Japanese terrain. Well, a Japanese gate-floor at least. 

Immediately after leaving the plane, we noticed how hot it was, even in the building. Our first stop before going through the immigration process, though, was the toilet. We expected some of those modern Japanese toilets we'd already seen on TV, but meh. All we got were normal looking toilets, without control panels, seat warming or washing features. ;) 

So off we went, to the immigration counter! Little did we know that the entry procedure when travelling into a non-EU land would take such a long time. 

That's it for now! Finally, some photos taken in the plane. Just click on the photos for a larger picture.

It was morning in Japan, and the middle of the night where we started our journey

If you want to know how our journey went on and how we got to our hotel, stay tuned! :)

~Mina