I am awake at 5:30 am in Tokyo writing this post. I had vastly underestimated how tired I would be after 24 total hours of being in transit (car/airport/airplane/airport/airplane/train). I had planned to stay out late last night but ended up crashing hard after 8pm. Nonetheless, the short time I have been here has already been a massive flood of new experiences.
I have for sure confused everyone I have met so far. On the first airplane, the attendants thought i was with these Chinese tourists. On the second, they thought I was Korean and gave me a Korean travel form. In Japan, they speak to me in Japanese to which they receive a dumbfounded look from me and a response in English – I have yet to use my extremely limited knowledge of simple Japanese phrases but it’s gotten me by so far.
The transit system – it took me a while wandering around like a headless chicken to figure out where to go to find the train but once I did it was pretty simple thanks to Google maps. The hype is real – trains are clean and timely and everyone on there is polite and quiet. Huge difference from the systems I’ve been on in the States. Also, the bigger train stations here are HUGE – they are straight up malls and the one at Shinjuku was like a maze to get out and figure out how to put myself in the right direction.
At last, my favorite topic: food. The airplane food was meh at best but it was cool that I got full meals on there included in my airfare. First meal was bibimbap, second was a poor excuse for scrambled eggs, and the third meal was a bulgogi rice dish. The food at Incheon airport (which by the way is the coolest airport I’ve been in) was actually really delicious – I had a spicy korean stew there.
By the time I arrived in Tokyo I had already had all those meals above so instead of getting food as my first meal, I went to visit Hitachino brewery (their beers are expensive in the States but I recommend trying them at least once) after stopping by the stunning Senso Ji temple. That temple was like stepping into those Samurai movies except this one had tons of tourists, locals, and street vendors surrounding it – it kind of reminded me of my experience at Chichen Itza.
My hotel is in the Shinjuku district and has a giant Godzilla head on top of it…
Yes, that was random. I thought so too.
The last thing I did last night was stop into a restaurant that had zero tourists inside. It was a small little place and had a case displaying a bunch of Yakitori skewers but they are known for Unagi. Of course, I got the Unagi don. It was unreal – the eel was like butter and the rice was also delicious.
Stay tuned. I’m going to get breakfast now.