Here we were! Our long awaited trip to Japan!
When flying from Japan out of Seatac, it's not too bad because the flight leaves around 10 or 11am so you get some breathing time in the morning. After a pretty gentile wakeup, we were on our way! We rolled our bags down the street towards the light rail, rode it for a little over an hour, and then made our way through the airport to our gate. Might just have been the easiest international departure I've ever had!
I couldn’t eat the in-flight meal because it all had bell peppers
After a grueling 10-hour flight we finally landed at Narita airport outside of Tokyo. The first thing we got hit with immediately after getting off the plane is the heat and humidity. A lot of the time when flying to a tropical spot or during the summer, you would expect this. But this was mid-October in a city the same latitude as Central California. Definitely out of the ordinary.
I gotta say, the first hour in Japan is always the scariest. For me it had been about a year and a half since I had been, so I had forgot nearly all of the little I knew about communication. Despite Kosuke and I doing everything together at the beginning, when they scanned our passports initially, we were told to go indifferent lines. Now I was definitely getting a little nervous because Kosuke's e-sim wasn't working and my phone was almost dead. I just had to hope we would both think of the same spot to find each other.
We go down our different lines and for some reason mine has almost no wait despite Kosuke's being incredibly long. I noticed there weren't any Americans in my line. When I got to the front of the line they asked me where I was a citizen of. After I told them American they pointed me to the sign that said "Japanese Citizen". I didn't really understand what was going on, so I just listened and went to the Japanese citizen line. Nothing weird happened from there; I was stamped through in 30 seconds.
Kosuke's line unfortunately took forever. I guess he wasn't as Japanese as me to be put in the fast line. So I wait by the baggage claim hoping that's where he went until I finally spotted him 45 minutes later. On to our train back to our hotel!
View from our hotel
One thing I did not expect was how early it got dark in Japan. It must be some weird time zone shenanigans because I did not expect it to be completely dark when we got on our train at 6pm.
We take our train to Ueno where we stayed for the night. Our hotel had an incredible view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, but it was definitely a little dingy—kinda how I'd describe Ueno in a nutshell. In the most consistently clean city of it's size in the world, the underbelly locations can be a bit jarring, but maybe I'm just spoiled. They do have a TGI Fridays though.
When you just get to Japan, what should be the first thing you eat? Why Sushiro of course!
Sushiro is a conveyor belt Sushi chain across the country. Now, there's a few conveyor belt chains, but Sushiro tends to be the most consistently good in my experience. Affordable, good fish, and a decent selection that changes from week to week.
This Sushiro was not great though, which was such a bummer because I hadn't eaten in nearly 24 hours. But hey, bad sushi in Japan is better than mediocre sushi in America so I can't really complain.
We then made our first konbini (convenient store) stop of the trip and took an early snooze for our first night. We had a big day to Osaka ahead of us!
