Tokyo Day 1

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Last week, Vincent and I headed off on a spur of the moment trip to Tokyo! This post tells the story (with photos!)

Basically, work life has been insanely stressful recently (many months of question marks and salary cuts leading up to this), and Air Canada had a crazy seat sale for crossing the Pacific. We decided that this was an appropriate "change of subject" mentally. I still don't know if I have a job with the new company (should within a few weeks) but at least this distracted me nicely.

We convinced two friends to join us (one from Halifax, and one from Toronto). First stop, the Maple Leaf International Departures Lounge at Toronto's Pearson Airport. At right, Vincent's total luggage for the trip.

We ended up there quite early to meet Kristopher's flight from Halifax, but it turned out our flight out to Tokyo's Narita Airport was delayed! So we spent a good two hours or more in the lounge (but limited food options; I was not impressed) and then started wandering the rest of the international terminal. We found a Brazilian soccer team (teenagers), interesting acoustic echo-altering art (at left), and not much else. Pretty sad, YYZ!

I fly a lot for work (77000 miles last year on Air Canada and United) so I had upgrade certificates we could use to escape the cattle pen in the back. Shown at right is Vincent in Air Canada's "Executive First" (with lie-flat beds!). Air Canada, despite lots of trouble in its past, has one of the best offerings (both in front and in the back) in North America. I highly recommend, for those who haven't taken them, and for those who hate them based on their experiences in 2001 or something.

The lie-flat bed seats (which are upright for takeoff and landing) sit at an angle, so we had to peer around our seats to see each other. Very comfortable in that we could adjust our footrest, back support, headrest, and angle all independently. Plus massage feature! We were quite excited to have these seats for the 13-hour flight, but we drank a bit too much in the lounge (or maybe were overtired or whatever) and ended up unable to sleep and headachey for the first half of the flight. Tyler and Kristopher were in the back but slept well, luckily. No point in everyone being supertired!

One thing I liked was the extensive meal options. Air Canada offers a fancy meal option on the way there, a Kaiseki Meal (at left). Tasty! There was more after this actually, but I forgot to take a picture. Vin ordered the low-cal meal so his options were more limited, but still, very nice.

We visited Tyler and Kristopher a couple times, and wandered a bit (it's a big plane!) and napped a bit too. The economy seat section that T&K were in had no working TVs, which sucked for them, but we all had working TVs for the trip home. We also had working maps -- something Air Canada was late to, compared to other carriers. The live map view zooms in and out showing where the plane is, and various other map/speed/altitude functions. Great fun as a distraction.

Since we left late we got to Tokyo late (about 2 hours), and there were 4-5 staff waiting at the end of the jetway yelling out names (and pointing to large-font printouts of names on the wall) trying to ensure everyone got where they were going. We got through there, down the long long looooooong hallway (multiple moving sidewalks) to get to the centre of the terminal and customs, and then finally we were really in Tokyo. I had instructions and had even seen a picture of where we were going next, to get our train ticket to the city, but it still proved pretty tricky to find. By the time we found it (15 mins at most) we had missed a train and had to wait about 40 mins for the next one. We didn't take a photo, but once we were in the train platform area there were no seats, but we discovered a sign saying "waiting room" with an arrow. We followed the arrow around a corner to find just some seats, nothing else. Oh well. Better than nothing I guess. Plus we'd been sitting for most of 13 hours.

The train ticket we got was a combo for foreigners: train to the city, plus a 1500 yen subway pass. Normally, this would cost about 5000 yen, and it cost us 3500. Nice! The subway pass is called a Suica card, and it actually is e-money, not an unlimited pass, but you could use it at vending machines if they had the right type of scanner. Shown at right, my bizarre-tasting "Pepsi NEX Zero", and the brochure that came with the Suica card (attached, just like a credit card or metropass). Oh, also pictured: us, on the train.

The train takes nearly 90 minutes to get from Narita Terminal 1 to the station we were staying near, Shinjuku Station. Shinjuku is the busiest train station in Japan apparently, with over 60 exits. This became a challenge later anytime we were trying to find our way out!

The train also had a handy LED map showing our progress - you can see at left the red line which is made up of little separate segments that lit up every few minutes. Our destination was Shinjuku, which is a white circle lit in red between the green and blue lines. The airport is about 75 km from the station we were heading for. Our hotel was right next door to the station -- as long as you chose the correct door. It was also a 20-minute walk from the station if you chose the wrong door. We experimented with both approaches.

It gets dark in Tokyo early (and gets light early too). So our train which was outdoors for most of the trip was in the total darkness for most of the way, so we only saw lights on apartment buildings and nothing else until we got a bit closer to the city. Then the neon started. And by god it's still going -- there's a lot of neon and lights there. No streetlights mind you, just advertising lights. It was incredible, just like you may have seen in movies.

This is the view from our hotel room. It's pretty calm actually. Better views of our neighbourhood are coming later.

One thing that we found surprising is that it didn't feel as insane as we'd been warned it would. I think that a lot of tourist guidebooks are written for small-town people and less-frequent travelers rather than targeted at us. Yes there were lots of people, and yes everyone was smoking, but I didn't feel like I was on another planet. Certainly the other side of the planet, of course. But lots of recognizable things (both in terms of brands and in terms of just behaviour/organization).

Once we checked in -- tiny rooms! But very comfy and nicely decorated, a steal at $111/nt CAD$ -- we showered, changed, and then met up with a friend-of-a-friend of Tyler. She took us to a type of restaurant called an Izakaya, basically a bar with food where everyone gets a mostly-private room. There were several other people (all of them friends with each other, but strangers to us) already drinking and done eating, so it was a great/scary culture shock to jump into the mix. They were speaking mostly Japanese at high speed (even the gai-jin, or foreigners, like us) and very loud and enthusiastic. It was fantastic to see.

Shown from L-R: Kristopher, Vincent, me, Ian (who lives in Toronto and we have friends in common with, but we had no idea he would be there), no idea, no idea, Tyler, Jen, Janan, and no idea. Helpful, I know. I've spent every day since getting back regretting my lax attitude toward getting people's contact info, let me tell you.

Each table had a doorbell on it, which was used to summon the server to make an order. When we arrived they were ready to make an order, but we were all sitting next to the doorbell so they just started yelling PING PONG! PING PONG PINGPONGPINGPONG!!! at us. We weren't really sure what to do with that until it was explained.

Jen and Janan teach English and speak Japanese, so they were our ordering helpers and guides the first night. Incredibly helpful to have that safety net the first night for sure. We thought we were doing well one time the waiter came by, because we pointed, motioned, used the correct word (we thought) for two, and he nodded, but we never got what we ordered. We were sad, because at the time, we both were so excited: "Oh my god, we just had an entire conversation in Japanese!!" Maybe next time. :)

After the Izakaya, it was off to ni-chome (nee-CHO-may), or more precisely Shinjuku ni-chome, which means the 2nd district in Shinjuku. People who have been to Tokyo will recognize this as the gay area. Janan was our guide, but she wasn't actually sure where we were going, so it was a bit of wandering at first to find our way. Luckily, you can see that this was still pretty enjoyable. Vincent was supertired, dehydrated, yet still beaming from ear to ear.

So for reference, this was about 10pm on Saturday night, only a couple blocks from our hotel. Check out all the people! Shinjuku has the gay district, the red-light district, and a huge busy train station -- really happening place. I'm very glad we ended up there, it helped make our trip better for sure.

Our first bar was called Advocates. A very popular place to start the evening, it was crawling with gai-jin. Apparently, there are many establishments (gay and non) that are not friendly to foreigners, but the best gay bars seem to be wide open to all. We met tons of Australians, Americans, Brits, and Europeans there, plus many Japanese who wanted to meet foreigners. The one thing that really stood out for me was how amazingly social and friendly people were, of all stripes. There's nowhere else I've been (including Atlantic Canada) where people were that open to meeting new people. I think the culture shock had something to do with it -- being somewhere so unusual and different, and finding someone who speaks French (for example), was always greeting with such smiles!

Here's a photo of the bar. Not part of the bar -- the entire bar. The vast majority of patrons stand in the street or on the sidewalk and chat, and just go inside for drinks and the bathroom. See the tiger-print in the back of the bar? That's the back of the bar. You can see the whole thing. If you stretch, you can touch both walls at the same time -- it's really tiny. But decent prices, decent music, and great people.

Apparently Saturday nights are the best for going out, and we had an amazing time that first night. Being on a different timezone helped. We started at Advocates, then went to Dragon Men for more drinks and meeting new people (photos on our facebook albums, linked at end of each LJ entry). After Dragon Men, we continued to the famous Arty Farty, a regular dance bar. Cover charge, but two free drinks included, so not bad.

For comparison, drinks seemed to be 600-800 yen, which means $7-8 each.

Around 3am it was time to go (2pm in Toronto). We ended up at McDonald's for a few people to have their late night snacks, then hanging out in the hotel until much too late. At 5am, time for sleep. More to come tomorrow!

Facebook album for day one: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=304674&id=618435510&l=64b7338acc