Japan day 1

     I work up at 4:47 this morning... weird... it's light outside. Sunrise is at 4:27am... wowza. I finally go back to sleep, but everyone is starting to get up pretty early. I'm not sure if it's due to it being Sunday, or if it's just normally like this, but not a whole lot is open before 10:00am. That's ok, we get in another of our "must do's"... a short walk to buy food and drinks from a 7/11. Very tasty that first 7/11 egg salad sandwich. It has the hype for good reason. 

    We all clean up a bit, dress, and look at how best to get to the MORI digital art exhibit, teamLab. Turns out, a taxi was waaaay quicker and not too expensive. A bit of a fun walk/wait due to all the one way streets around the apartment, ie. the taxi can't easily get anywhere. But in the end, we found each other. A nice ride to the museum. We were early and it's inside a huge plaza, so we did some exploring and found a great coffee shop and grabbed some drinks and snacks. 

    Ok, close to time so we walk and enter the exhibit. Wow, it was really great. We stayed inside almost two hours. I'll post a few pictures, but everyone's favorite seemed to be the room with the lighted balls. A cool runner up was the Lilly pads where you could affect the 'fish' buy moving your hands.

    Art seen, we take another taxi to the post office where we pick up the baseball game tickets we ordered. Post office? Ummm... ok... that's what it said. 

    Tickets in hand, we walk to the metro for a short ride, then long walk around the Tokyo Dome to our entrance. A section in the outfield which was also the cheering section! And if you haven't seen Japanese baseball games and cheering, well, it's insane and pretty much constant. 

    Got food and beer (yay beer!) and enjoyed and even joined in the chants and singing! Afterwards, we take the metro all the way back to the apartment. It's going to be a short rest before some dinner, and probably a pretty early crash. Great day for sure, but we're (or at least me) definitely needing to catch up on rest.

Japan travel day

     Well, this trip started off with a bit more excitement than we wanted. Two delayed flights on the first legs and one missed alarm to leave for the first leg! But, surprisingly, we all made it to our last flight ok. Abigail, Bailley, and I were on the same San Francisco to Tokyo flight and Madison was on a Vancouver to Tokyo flight landing at almost the same time.

    This was my first time in business class and boy howdy it was nice! 

    The only issue was that I needed a primer on "what to do in business class" before I got to try it. The attendant, Suzuki, knew my name as I boarded and proceeded to redo/fix everything I did for the first half of the flight... definitely a learning experience! 

    We land and deplane and meet Madison at immigration. 

    Once past immigration and the customs, we hit the only real issues so far. Getting from Narita airport to Shibuya/Shinjuku. The Skyline requires a different ticket and doesn't use Suica... so all our prepping and planning kind of hit a snag. But we finally got help, bought tickets, and after a wait got on the correct train. Thirty minute or so ride to Shinjuku then on to the local lines. 

    There, Suica in affect, we negotiated a few transfers and then a walk and we are at the apartment. The owner met us there and gave us a run down on everything. Most importantly, they gave us some ramen recommendations that were close and left a ton of Japanese snacks and candies! 

    We take a minute to regroup, then had back out for food. As we were trying to find a ramen place, we ran into the house owner, who basically hand led us to a place and showed us what to do. Well, that still wasn't enough, because we struggled a bit. At the door, you used a machine to pick what you want and it printed tickets. Then you give the cook the tickets and waited. Well, first, you couldn't select any of the meals. Oh, maybe money in first. But then the machine wouldn't take my bills. Finally my first "sumimasen"... ah, evidently you can't use a 10,000 yen bill. She gives me a 5,000 and 5 1,000 yen bills. Hmmm... won't take the 5,000 yen bill either.... oh, maybe the 1,000 right above the bill slot is telling us something. Ok, we finally get ordered and wait. Wow... the wait was worth it. Fantastic ramen in a tine place all together. We sat, slurped, and exchanged until we were all full.

    A short walk back to the apartment, get ready for bed, and crash.