Tokyo – Day 1

A surprise to many, I bought a last minute flight to Japan for the end of year holiday period. Feeling like something different and being a bit overdue for some travel, I thought “why not?”. Armed with a camera, clothes and a guide book (side note – Rough Guides are the best) I set off in the wee hours of Boxing Day morning. Due to the last minute nature of the flight, and combined with holiday season, Jetstar seem to offer the best value. Having only flown Jetstar domestic once before in NZ this was also a new experience. As luck would have it I flew in the supposed shiny new 787 Dreamliner into Tokyo Narita after a 4 hour stopover in Cairns. The Cairns international terminal, I may add, is pretty pitiful. A single cafe/bar and a single third-party operated lounge with some weird access rules that didn’t apply to me. The Dreamliner wasn’t too bad and on par with some of the modern Airbus fleet but not as fancy as the A380. Jetstar was also as interest experience, with baggage, seat selection, meals and entertainment all purchasable add-ons. Yes, a 10 hour international flight with optional meals and baggage. I occupied myself most of the flight with movies and podcasts to keep myself awake and avoid jet lag.

Landing at Narita, the first observation to be made was that it was cold. 7C cold in fact. Good thing I packed a jacket. In my baggage. Smart. Most buildings I would find are well heated and sometimes a jacket can be too warm though. It seemed that a few other flights all landed around the same time of 7pm and spent a lovely 45 minutes in the immigration queue. The arrivals hall was oddly quiet. I grabbed a local SIM (side note, Japan only offers data-only SIMs to foreigners it seems) from one of the handful of counters and a quick snack of a hotdog and iced green tea before getting on my hotel transfer. Observation, Japan’s many airports have “airport limousines” for hotel transfers. These are in fact, busses (coach-style so there’s seats at least).

I stayed at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, which I prebooked because it’s useful to have a bed for the first night sometimes. Observation, hotel rooms in Japan are small. I’m talking the walkable space is person width. And also made for what seems to be a characteristicly short population with the door just clearing my head. Another observation, Japanese toilets. Many have an electronic attachment for seat warming,  deodorising, bidet control and sometimes music. The one in my hotel room had the seat set way too hot. Now usually there’s English as well on the controls but this was worn off, so started pressing appropriate looking buttons. As it turns out, I discovered the bidet button. That was fun.

By time I got to my room it was nearly 10pm (side note – Narita airport is nearly an hour and a half from central Tokyo) and I hadn’t had dinner yet. The hotel conveniently had a 24/7 restaurant which had a good beef cutlet curry.