Japan Trip Days 1 and 2

There is a 14-hour time difference between the US East Coast and Japan. Upon arriving in Japan, I seemed to recover from the time difference pretty quickly, and was in decent shape by day 3 or so. Now that I’m back in the US, I’m struggling a lot more. The night before last I slept from 9pm to 1am and that was it; the evening before that, I didn’t fall asleep until 5am! Wicked. I think it might be under control after last night.

Day 1 - The Trip Over

The first flight left Raleigh (RDU) at 6 am, which is super not my favorite. I never sleep well before an early flight, and this was no exception. I slept maybe three hours beforehand. RDU was hopping at 4:30 am: a fair number of passengers, security well-staffed, and the lounge was open. The first flight to Minneapolis was ~3 hours and uneventful. The second flight to Tokyo was 13½ hours. My lack of sleep the previous night helped here, and I was able to sleep around 4½ hours on the flight. I lucked into a really good book, so I just read that when I wasn’t sleeping or eating.

Arrival in Tokyo

In my various travels, to India, UAE, Iceland, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, etc., I’ve found that International Arrivals is pretty much the same wherever. Get off the plane, walk down the longest hallway you can imagine, up and down some escalators, sometimes go to a desk and fill out an arrivals form, and then line up for chit-chat with border control. For Japan, they have a website you can visit before your flight and fill out the arrival form online. You then receive a QR code you save on your phone. The QR system was brand new, so I think the airport employees were surprised by how many tech savvy people debarked the plane with QR codes ready to go. I can’t say the automated machines are intuitive or user friendly, but the arrivals area is well-staffed with people to help you through gestures and pointing, so I was able to cruise through everything in about five minutes.

Trains

You can buy and charge an electronic rail pass before you arrive in Japan. This is the Suica card I mentioned previously. It acts as an ‘Express Transit’ card on your (newer) smartphone. When you get to the turnstile, you just unlock your phone and then tap it to the turnstile. Having that set up in advance saved some headaches.

I had two general ways to get from Tokyo-Haneda airport to my hotel: less walking but with some train transfers, or fewer transfers but with more walking. Since I landed at a reasonable 3 pm, I opted for the walking route. I was able to take one train to Asakusa Station, which I think took around 40 minutes (I was in a sleep-deprived haze), and then walk 15 minutes to my hotel.

Google Maps is good about telling you which subway exit to use so that you’re pointed in the right direction. Once up on the surface I mainly navigated by compass, knowing I needed to head northwest for 15 minutes or so, and that the specific route didn’t matter much as there aren’t bad neighborhoods to worry about. I happened upon the famous Nakamise-dori Street. Fortunately, it wasn’t as crowded as I’d seen in some YouTube videos.

Day 2 - Tokyo

I made it to the hotel around 4pm, exhausted, but determined to do some initial sightseeing. I toured around the neighborhood some, grabbed some quick bites from the nearby convenience store, and then settled in around 8pm local time.