Stefhan and I are in Tokyo for a few days before we jet off to Okinawa to see my father. Yesterday was our first full day in Tokyo, after arriving at our hotel at 8pm the night before. Our travel TO Tokyo was safe and exhausting, but on a scale of 1-10 in international travel, it ranked somewhere in the range of "be thankful you didn't have a screaming baby in the middle seat next to you for 14 hours."
We woke up at 5 am for our 9 am flight, having packed the night before. Stefhan, fueled by the first time plane jitters woke up early and made breakfast for us. I stumbled out of bed and into the shower, not able to open my eyes until that cup of coffee. We got to the airport (THANKS MOM FOR TAKING US), checked in, got through security, and arrived at our terminal in record time. Perfect. This is going to be great. We're good.
Our flight to Chicago begins boarding, and the throngs of people who start jockeying for a better position in a pointless line never cease to interest me. Look lady, I see your "boarding group 4" on your boarding pass, quit trying to push in front me, because I got that group 2 on my pass... back up. back the eff up.
When we land in Chicago we go to take out the laptop to watch some more Dexter when...
"Hey, did you pack up the charger cord?"
"No... I thought you did."My Macbook charger is still plugged into the wall at BWI. FML.
We scurry to one of those electronic stores in the terminal, and the clerk informs us that we're screwed. But, Apple stores do exist in Tokyo!
The plane ride was almost exactly 12 hours to Narita airport. Stef and I were able to have an open middle seat in our row, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of the tailies who had entire rows to themselves... multiple trips to the bathroom showed people stretched out across 3 or 4 seats, dead to the world.
There was a baby across the aisle from us, an ominous sign of a treacherous plane ride. He whimpered as we were taking off, but passed out almost immediately after, for a good 3 hours. He ended up sleeping or playing with his seat mates for the entire flight, and didn't have a screamfest for the entire plane ride. His grandmother gets a caretaker of the year award for sure.
Through my minimal Japanese and previous memories of airport trips I manage to get us to an airport bus that goes straight to our hotel. We check in, shower, and pass out.
Shortly after falling asleep we are awakened by Jazz muzak streaming through a speaker in our room. A man comes on, speaking in Japanese. I jump out of bed, running over to the wall in a sleep induced coma, ready to fight this invisible sleep intruder. As quickly as it came on, the Jazz muzak fades away, and I stumble back to bed.
We get up the next morning, eat breakfast (came with the room), and plan our day. We had already done some exploring in Akasaka the night before, on the hunt for Stefhan's cheerios. We headed to Shibuya to explore, and snapped some killer pictures of Japan's homeless in rare form.
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| Stefhan spotted him as we were waiting to cross the street |
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| And caught this one on the fly, as he was running across the street |
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