JordanPachal.ca ...Just Me, Myself and I...

As noted above, we have made it to Japan.  Minus the fact that we followed the midday sun all the way over to Japan, so we were in complete daylight for almost a full day (we were up for around 21 hours before finally crashing around 3am PST - 7pm Japan) travelling was "mostly" painless.  The flight over on Japan Airlines was great.  The meals provided were good, they kept us adequately hydrated with multiple beverage services and they had some amazing in-flight entertainment/activities with a great in-seat system.  A small remote was embedded into each seat which could be removed and used to control on-demand movies, audio channels, a flight map which showed current position/current speed, ETA, etc, external cameras so you could watch the planes course looking forward or looking down, and there were also games which could be played.  A very nice comprehensive system.

Once we got to the Airport, we were catalogued into the Japanese database with scans of our index fingers and a photograph prior to getting through luggage claim and customs to make our way out of the airport to the great outdoors of Tokyo.  It was like hitting a wall...

Weather-wise, Tokyo is currently very hot and humid right now.  The temperatures are hovering around 30*C with high humidity so it doesn't take long to feel sticky and gross.

The next wall we hit was thinking we weren't actually going to make it to our hotel.  We decided to take a taxi to our hotel just to make things easier so at least we could get settled prior to worrying too much about our luggage and trying to figure out "The Japanese Way".  If you think the Japanese culture moves fast, wait until you get into a Taxi.  I am not sure how many theme parks Japan has, but you can add a really big one...the Japanese Highway System.  After travelling along the highways at an average of around 100km/h (sometimes more, sometimes less), roughly 3 meters behind the car in front of you, careening through toll booths like they weren't there (a button in the cab raised the stop bars at the last possible second) it was quite an adventure.  The roughly 60km, almost hour-long adventure then ended with a cab fare of about 23,000 Yen.  At 1 Canadian Dollar being equal to about 100 Yen, I'll let you do the math.

The hotel we are staying in is decent, however the room is very small.  We have 3 small separate beds and absolutely no place to put our luggage, so our 3 suitcases are against the wall creating a quite cozy atmosphere out of the already narrow walkways.

Our first venture out into Tokyo after checking in showed us just how out of place we are currently.  It is a very different culture, which was expected, however we haven't been into the heart of Tokyo so we haven't exactly experienced the true busy nature of the city quite yet.

I will keep you posted as to how our assimilation into the Japanese culture continues.

Take care,

- Jordan