Even Kevin admits that the thirteen hour flight passes quickly. The airline feeds you nonstop: this time we had the added menu selection of beef stuffed manicotti, and it gives me the opportunity to catch up on some movies I haven't yet seen.
English is sparse at best in Narita Airport, but we were able to navigate without any trouble. Same thing with the train system. I've found in my travels that train systems throughout the world are all basically the same, so even though we couldn't read much of anything we were able to purchase our tickets, get through the turn styles and make our connections. The hardest part was trying to wheel our suitcases through the mass of people during Tokyo's rush hour.
The train ride from the airport into the city took about an hour. I was amazed at how rural the landscape was at first—lots of rice paddies and bamboo trees. As we got closer to the city we saw more house—mostly modest two-story dwellings packed very close together on narrow winding streets.
Robin meet us at the station closest to her apartment. On the ten minute walk to her place, I was amazed by the cleanliness of the Tokyo streets and the lack of pollution in the air. We Skype with Robin, so she had given us a brief video tour when she first moved to Tokyo. However, the pictures do her space no justice. The building is far more modern than I expected. She was correct; there's just enough room for us to get two futon mattresses on the floor. The total square footage probably isn't much larger than the average U.S. hotel room, but within Robin has a full kitchen and a washer dryer.
Kevin and I had a ten minute lesson on how to work the lights, get hot water (there are separate buttons in the kitchen and bathroom for turning the hot water heater on and off) and most importantly, how to flush to toilet. The Japanese have managed to make bathrooms far more tech-heavy than what I'm used to in the U.S.
After dropping off our bags, we took a walk through the park across the street to a ramen shop where Kevin and I had our first taste of authentic Japanese food. One of the things that has surprised me so far about Tokyo is that none of the buildings are very tall. I would say on average, nothing is larger than four stories. I guess with the number of people living in the city, I was expecting towering sky scrappers everywhere like Hong Kong.
After dinner, we walked to the grocery store. Robin was not exaggerating when she said nothing is in English. You just sort of look at the pictures on the packaging and try to pick something that looks good. We think that we found Canadian bacon for making egg sandwiches. We'll see tomorrow when we try to cook it. I've also noticed in my travels that an entire aisle devoted to cereal appears to be a strictly U.S. phenomenon. The Tokyo super market had about four choices.
Robin is still working today, so Kevin and I will be trying to explore some of the city on our own. I made sure to print a map showing her apartment and address, so in a worse case scenario we can hand it to a taxi drive to get us back home.
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