May 31/June 1, 2013
Today we left home and embarked on our Japan adventure. Dad came with us to the airport and talked THE WHOLE WAY about some house/utility trailer/who knows what else as I was in the backseat and not really listening. I don’t think Ben was listening either, but he was making some “I’m listening” noises. I’m sure dad gallivanted all over King’s Creation with my car and its previously full tank of gas, buying fish in Steveston, etc. Anyways, we got to the airport over 3 hours early and there was already a line for check-in, and that line wasn’t moving. They started actually bringing people through at 11:15 (our flight left at 2:15), and even though we were some of the first people there, when we asked for an exit row the ticket lady said she only had 1 seat, so I asked for a bulkhead row, and after humming and hawing for a while and talking to someone on her radio, she gave us bulkhead seats.
The wait at the airport was uneventful, as was the flight. The meals were decent; we had beef with rice and guylan, been salad with a piece of salami, green salad, cantaloupe and honeydew melon and a Dixie cup of ice cream. For breakfast we were served a juice box, apple slices and a sweet bagel/bread thing with the hole filled with corn and hot dogs. There were snacks available throughout the flight and they were mostly rice crackers with the exception of this disgusting salty squishy thing I ate that left a horrible taste in my mouth. We did leave right on time and we arrived in Tokyo a bit early, and of course we were pretty anxious to get off after being on the plane for 10 hours. Upon arriving at Narita International Airport, Ben immediately noted that there are no advertisements of any kind in the airport, it was actually really weird and the walls looked very barren. Also, Narita is a pretty old and outdated airport.
After finding our way through immigration, picking up our bags, and clearing customs (without declaring our Hawkins Cheezies), we took a shuttle to the other terminal because (of course) that is where we needed to pick up our phones and rail passes. Once those tasks were accomplished, we got on the train to Tokyo. Along the way there were lots of rice paddies and little houses before we got into the city. I was super tired so I started to fall asleep. The train ride was about an hour and instead of taking 2 more trains in a round-about way to get to our apartment, we decided to just walk and ventured out onto the streets of Tokyo. After a bit of uncertainty with our map, we found our apartment and settled in for the night. We woke up at 7am on May 31 and as I am writing this it is (our time) 4:36am on June 1st, but technically 8:36pm on June 1st, and we are both exhausted.
June 2, 2013
Because we went to bed so early/late, we woke up at 5:15am local time and had a couple of hours to kill before Derrick came to pick us up to go to Tsukuba Circuit racetrack. So we took a walk at 6:30am to our local 7-11, which was a convenient couple blocks from our apartment. They had all sorts of Japanese beer, tea and other beverages, as well as little meals, noodles, rice snacks and sweet buns, very much like the little individually wrapped buns at T&T. We ended up getting green tea, orange juice, some rice snacks and edamame chips, and pork buns, and it only came to just over 700 yen (about $7), which considering it’s a convenience store and not a grocery store, I thought was not too bad for a small breakfast and snacks for our drive.
Derrick came to pick us up at about 7:15am with his friend Tyrell, who was visiting from Seattle. Before heading out of Tokyo, we went for a hearty breakfast at a Japanese “fast food” place whose main dish is a bowl of rice covered with pork. I took Derrick’s recommendation and tried the curry dish (apparently the Japanese have their own curry, who knew?), which was quite tasty. Then began the adventure of finding our way out of Tokyo by getting on the right highway; this is easier said than done even with a GPS. At one point Derrick didn’t know which way to go so he just stopped in between the 2 turnoffs until he figured it out. It took us about an hour to get to the racetrack, so we were there at about 9am. Then we wandered around and watched the different cars go around the track.
After a while I started to wonder how much longer we had to stay there….Ben was also bored, but Derrick and Tyrell were really interested in the cars and seemed to be having a good time, so we suggested that Derrick could drop us off at a train station and we could find our way back to Tokyo so they could stay as long as they wanted. But Derrick was ready to go so we left Tyrell there to get a ride to the airport from one of his other friends.
We didn’t really have a destination in mind and for some reason Derrick decided to drive down some random dirt road that didn’t look like it went anywhere except into a farmer’s field. Then he let Ben drive and they filmed a super awkward video with me in the backseat. We continued to drive aimlessly and stopped at a couple car places for some reason (I guess so Ben and Derrick could look at more car stuff…). We decided to head towards a lake that Derrick found on his GPS because we figured there might be something to do/see once we got there, but it was pretty much a bust, and also in the middle of nowhere. So we headed back towards civilization and found a McDonald’s to have lunch at. Ben got a pork burger and I got an ebi burger. Ben also got chicken nuggets because they came with a wasabi dipping sauce, which was excellent.
The McDonald’s naturally had quite a few kids and Ben got some pretty good looks from them; the adults haven’t really reacted to my satisfaction, Derrick said its because they are too polite. I went to go use the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror I saw that I had gotten a crazy sunburn on my chest and face, despite the fact that it was super cloudy/overcast all morning. As I write this I have a cold compress on my chest and I’m really hoping that it doesn’t look quite as bad in the morning, because it is looking pretty horrendous right now.
After lunch we headed back into Tokyo and went to Daiba, which is a man-made island with giant shopping malls. We wandered around there for the rest of the afternoon and saw a giant robot, a giant ferris wheel, a mall that looked like the malls in Las Vegas, and a crazy arcade with people with crazy died hair and weird clothes. Also, Derrick got heck from a girl for taking a picture of her while she was playing a dancing game (but he actually took a video clip and then pretended he didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to because he’s a foreigner). Then we went through the Toyota showroom and checked out all the weird cars they have here and not at home. It was basically a playground made up of new cars because they were all full of kids climbing in and out. Also, for some reason there was a group (not sure at this point if they were singers or dancers or just girls who are famous because they dress up in cute outfits and giggle into their hands) who were doing a fan meet-and-greet.
Although it was only 7pm, we were all pretty tired since we started our day so early, so we headed back to the van and Derrick dropped us off back at our apartment. Ben has already fallen asleep and I’m pretty tired too. It’s probably good that we are going to bed so early again because we are planning on doing a lot of walking tomorrow and seeing all the things that are walking distance from our apartment, starting with the Tsukiji Fish Market.
After finding our way through immigration, picking up our bags, and clearing customs (without declaring our Hawkins Cheezies), we took a shuttle to the other terminal because (of course) that is where we needed to pick up our phones and rail passes. Once those tasks were accomplished, we got on the train to Tokyo. Along the way there were lots of rice paddies and little houses before we got into the city. I was super tired so I started to fall asleep. The train ride was about an hour and instead of taking 2 more trains in a round-about way to get to our apartment, we decided to just walk and ventured out onto the streets of Tokyo. After a bit of uncertainty with our map, we found our apartment and settled in for the night. We woke up at 7am on May 31 and as I am writing this it is (our time) 4:36am on June 1st, but technically 8:36pm on June 1st, and we are both exhausted.
June 2, 2013
Because we went to bed so early/late, we woke up at 5:15am local time and had a couple of hours to kill before Derrick came to pick us up to go to Tsukuba Circuit racetrack. So we took a walk at 6:30am to our local 7-11, which was a convenient couple blocks from our apartment. They had all sorts of Japanese beer, tea and other beverages, as well as little meals, noodles, rice snacks and sweet buns, very much like the little individually wrapped buns at T&T. We ended up getting green tea, orange juice, some rice snacks and edamame chips, and pork buns, and it only came to just over 700 yen (about $7), which considering it’s a convenience store and not a grocery store, I thought was not too bad for a small breakfast and snacks for our drive.
Derrick came to pick us up at about 7:15am with his friend Tyrell, who was visiting from Seattle. Before heading out of Tokyo, we went for a hearty breakfast at a Japanese “fast food” place whose main dish is a bowl of rice covered with pork. I took Derrick’s recommendation and tried the curry dish (apparently the Japanese have their own curry, who knew?), which was quite tasty. Then began the adventure of finding our way out of Tokyo by getting on the right highway; this is easier said than done even with a GPS. At one point Derrick didn’t know which way to go so he just stopped in between the 2 turnoffs until he figured it out. It took us about an hour to get to the racetrack, so we were there at about 9am. Then we wandered around and watched the different cars go around the track.
After a while I started to wonder how much longer we had to stay there….Ben was also bored, but Derrick and Tyrell were really interested in the cars and seemed to be having a good time, so we suggested that Derrick could drop us off at a train station and we could find our way back to Tokyo so they could stay as long as they wanted. But Derrick was ready to go so we left Tyrell there to get a ride to the airport from one of his other friends.
We didn’t really have a destination in mind and for some reason Derrick decided to drive down some random dirt road that didn’t look like it went anywhere except into a farmer’s field. Then he let Ben drive and they filmed a super awkward video with me in the backseat. We continued to drive aimlessly and stopped at a couple car places for some reason (I guess so Ben and Derrick could look at more car stuff…). We decided to head towards a lake that Derrick found on his GPS because we figured there might be something to do/see once we got there, but it was pretty much a bust, and also in the middle of nowhere. So we headed back towards civilization and found a McDonald’s to have lunch at. Ben got a pork burger and I got an ebi burger. Ben also got chicken nuggets because they came with a wasabi dipping sauce, which was excellent.
The McDonald’s naturally had quite a few kids and Ben got some pretty good looks from them; the adults haven’t really reacted to my satisfaction, Derrick said its because they are too polite. I went to go use the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror I saw that I had gotten a crazy sunburn on my chest and face, despite the fact that it was super cloudy/overcast all morning. As I write this I have a cold compress on my chest and I’m really hoping that it doesn’t look quite as bad in the morning, because it is looking pretty horrendous right now.
After lunch we headed back into Tokyo and went to Daiba, which is a man-made island with giant shopping malls. We wandered around there for the rest of the afternoon and saw a giant robot, a giant ferris wheel, a mall that looked like the malls in Las Vegas, and a crazy arcade with people with crazy died hair and weird clothes. Also, Derrick got heck from a girl for taking a picture of her while she was playing a dancing game (but he actually took a video clip and then pretended he didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to because he’s a foreigner). Then we went through the Toyota showroom and checked out all the weird cars they have here and not at home. It was basically a playground made up of new cars because they were all full of kids climbing in and out. Also, for some reason there was a group (not sure at this point if they were singers or dancers or just girls who are famous because they dress up in cute outfits and giggle into their hands) who were doing a fan meet-and-greet.
Although it was only 7pm, we were all pretty tired since we started our day so early, so we headed back to the van and Derrick dropped us off back at our apartment. Ben has already fallen asleep and I’m pretty tired too. It’s probably good that we are going to bed so early again because we are planning on doing a lot of walking tomorrow and seeing all the things that are walking distance from our apartment, starting with the Tsukiji Fish Market.
Have you been keeping wierd statistics such as, the number of non-Japanese people that you see that are not in your travelling party? Have you visited a cat cafe yet
ReplyDeleteAlso, Dad has been driving your car, and I have it right now at work. Are there lots of stores there that sell curtains that one sees in sushi restaurants here? You should also keep track of the number of "waving cats" that you see on your travels.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post! Thanks for bringing us along on the adventure. Buy some wasabi kit-Kats if you see them. Those are my favorite!
ReplyDelete