Tokyo

I've wanted to go to Japan since sophomore year of college when all my teachers told me my drawing had a Japanese style. Previously, I knew absolutely nothing about Japanese art and I still don't know much except that I think ukiyo-e prints and Japanese anime are pretty. In spite of wanting to visit Japan I never really actively looked into booking an expensive flight there. Living in Shanghai it is a quick 2 hour plane ride. Danny's round trip ticket cost about 300 US dollars. For me it didn't cost much extra at all to do a 5 day layover on my way to visit home for winter break.

When we booked our tickets one of the first things I did was e-mail my college roommate, Ru, who grew up in Tokyo. Ru sent me an amazing list of enough things to see in Tokyo to keep me busy for the whole trip. Originally, Danny and I planned to spend some time in Tokyo and take the train to Kyoto to spend most of the trip there. Once we looked into the cost of the train we realized it would be much cheaper to fly to Osaka for a separate trip sometime.

As we got closer to the trip things got really busy with work and neither of us had much time to plan. My class and the other fifth grade class had to put on a performance at the closing ceremony about our current unit. We organized the kids into groups each creating a script for a mini play about ancient civilizations in which one student traveled back in time to various civilizations through a magical schoolbook. The students kept having to leave and miss practice because they had other performances for their hobby groups. The script wasn't finished until two days before the performance at which point I did some hasty editing and made an animated PowerPoint of a book flipping pages to reveal photos of ancient artifacts. They managed to do an OK job in the end but it would have been much better if it weren't so rushed.

At any rate, I was so busy I didn't plan much for Tokyo or going home. I packed really quickly the night before in between working on the PowerPoint. We printed out the list of things Ru told us to see as well as a few pages off of lonelyplanet.com but I arrived feeling unprepared for the visit. I had work up until 5 hours before Danny's 5:00pm flight left.

We shared a cab to Pudong airport and then Danny and I took separate flights. His flight was supposed to leave a half hour before mine and he brought my suitcase because it had to be checked and he had more time to get it at baggage claim before we met at customs. We were hoping meeting there would work out since neither of us have phones that work in Japan. We agreed to e-mail when we got there if we had a problem. As I was waiting to board Danny called to say his flight was delayed. We agreed to meet at the hotel if we couldn't find each other before 10:00 pm. This was only a little problematic because I did have directions to the hotel but the room was in his name and I wasn't positive I would be able to check in. In the end I checked arriving flights at the information desk in Narita airport and found out Danny's flight had landed but he was at a different terminal than me. After a bit of wandering around the airport and trying to connect to the internet I got to talk to Danny on Skype and we agreed to just meet at the hotel.

I have traveled by myself before, but for some reason I was really nervous about traveling around Japan alone. Danny had exchanged some money for yen and given me a few bills but I had no idea what they were worth (80 yen to $1) since I really had not done any research and I was worried about if I had enough cash to get to the hotel. I found the train eventually and then the right subway and walked to our hotel.

I discovered Japanese people overall speak a lot more English than Chinese people after asking about a half dozen people for directions and help with the ticket machine which was fairly confusing - mostly I just wanted to double check I was going the right way because I was really nervous.

I was very relieved, at 11:30 pm, when I found the hotel. The front desk said Danny had already checked in. It made sense that he arrived first because I took the slow train, which took an extra half hour and was 1500 yen ($20) cheaper than the fast train which he arrived on.

We settled in and went to sleep without seeing much the first night. Our hotel room at the Chisun Inn was small but pretty clean and decent. We got a deal on Agoda but it was still way more than we paid for any hotels in China. We discovered the walls were really thin when we heard our neighbors, some obnoxious American couple, drunkenly and loudly arguing about their relationship at 2:00 am. We weren't asleep yet anyway and it was actually fairly entertaining, although I think people like that are why Americans have a bad reputation in a lot of countries.