Travel Day

Same old travel, new location, and a different mode. This time around Jon and I are trying something new for our trip to Japan. Hope you read above and enjoy this interactive experience.

Quick note: we are 14 hours ahead of Central Standard Time/16 hours ahead of PST. So we took off from SeaTac at 11:30am PST Saturday, May 17 and arrived in Tokyo at 2pm Sunday, May 18 after a 10.5 hr flight.

The flight is literally nothing to write home about other than we watched some movies, Jon ate some of the in-flight food, and we had water.

Tokyo is massive and sooo clean. And Japan is efficient. There are four sections to passport control: quarantine check (agents looking to see if you're Ill or showing signs of illness), passport bio-metric screening (scan your entry form, passport, fingerprints and photo), passport control where you get a sticker not a stamp, and finally one last check after picking up your bag where the bio-metric information identifies you using facial recognition. That last one is freaky.

We picked up our Welcome Suica card: a transit card that doubles as a prepaid credit card. The physical card is free and like bank cards in Cuba, any money you put on is use it or lose it. Great for getting around town but hopefully we're careful about how much we put on it.

After a 30 min train ride we arrived at the Park Hotel Tokyo. It's an old communications building where the top 10 floors have been converted into an art hotel. There is original artwork everywhere in the halls and the room. It's like staying in an art gallery.

We walked three blocks to a very small chirashi (mixed raw fish) bowl restaurant. We ordered at the door, stood at our own booth, and enjoyed amazing fish. There was also all we could drink miso soup with salmon, and green tea (Jon had a beer). Honestly, it was chirashi fast food. We paid at the door when we ordered, the food came in minutes, we ate standing up, no talking in our own little booth, and were done in 10 min. Still it was an incredibly enriching cultural experience.

After dinner, we hit up a konbini, a convenience store, to get breakfast. Lisa got a pickled plum and spicy cod roe onigiri (stuffed triangle rice balls), a couple of snacks, and Jon got a donut, and his first Famichiki (fried chicken from the Family Mart convenience store). The Famichiki he ate fresh, while it was still hot, and may have developed a new addiction.

It's now bedtime (having lost most of Saturday and Sunday). Tomorrow we'll begin our touristy activities and begin game play. Have a great Sunday!