Tokyo Arrival

So, we haven't blogged in quite a while. We found out a few weeks ago that PWC planned for me to join him on the one week "look see" trip to Tokyo. So, we arrived in Tokyo on Saturday around 1:00 pm Tokyo time. FYI...we are 14 hours ahead for those of you tracking time. The flight was long, but it went very smoothly. Of course, most things in First Class apparently always go pretty smooth. (For those of you that don't know...somehow our economy tickets that John booked through PWC got upgraded to First Class.) We had fun with that...took pictures like big dorks, but whatever! We were a little nervous when we got to the Japanese airport (Narita), but it went so great. Not crowded and we were out of there in 30 minutes. We took a shuttle to our hotel that was about 1 1/2 hours, so we got to see a little of Japan on the way. Our hotel is very nice...short ceilings and interesting toilets (not bad, just interesting). We decided to lay down for a minute. 2 hours later, we forced ourselves to get up. There are several restaurants in our hotel (like 30), but John wanted to be adventerous. So we took the train to another part of Tokyo, Shinjuku, which was only 4 stops away. We arrived at the bottom of a 14 story department store. There are several "cheap" places to eat on the bottom floors, then they have shopping in the middle 8 floors or so. At the top are more restaurants but a little nicer. We went for a place that had the type of food our Japanese instructor recommended, which was good. They didn't speak much English, but they had an English menu and all went well. I almost fell asleep at the table...the beer didn't help with that, go figure. From there we got back on the train and came home. Pretty mild first day...only a few stares. It's very interesting to be the minority, but Americans are old news for the most part. People here are extremely friendly, so I know we will be in good hands here. We were pretty proud of ourselves that we found our way around. When I say we, I really mean that John knew where he was going, and I just followed him like a puppy. Most interesting thing of the day: On one of the shopping floors, on one side they had handbags, shoes, scarfs, etc., and the other was a whole fish market set up. All this fish and who knows what else was sitting on a bed of ice with a person trying to sell it to us. I guess those places really are a one stop shop.

Today, Sunday, we took a morning half day tour. We visited a Shinto and Buddhist shrine (don't worry, no conversion was made). At the Shinto shrine, we got to witness part of a traditional Japanese wedding. They have this march they do through part of the shrine. We have some pictures, but I need John's help to post, so those will come later. We also went to the Imperial Gardens. Nothing was in bloom there at this time of year, but it was still a very peaceful place. They did have a koi pond with HUGE koi...Mom would have been very excited! From there we went to a shopping area that reminded me of China Town in New York. We did stop at this bakery place and got some things for breakfast...everything in there looked really good. Then the tour ended at Ginza, which they compare to 5th Avenue in New York. Passed a lot of familiar names, Coach, Gucci, Gap, etc. We went into the Gap for a few minutes. Then we went to another large department store to find some lunch. Loads of options, but we hardly knew what anything was. We found something that resembled Orange Chicken and went with it. Tonight we will have dinner with two of John's future co-workers. We are going out for sushi, so it should be really good. Tomorrow afternoon will be our first day of apartment hunting!