Japan

It is only the first real full day in Japan. Yesterday was taken up by travel. We got up at 4:30am and arrived at Narita Airport, 7pm Tokyo time.

The pilot's landing was perfect. The staff were friendly and the 30$ upgrade to get more leg room was well worth it. Who says JetStar is the "Death Star"!! I was very satisfied with the service.

But boy was it a long day. After arriving at Tokyo, we still had to catch a bus to Tokyo City Air Terminal, *then* catch a cab to our hotel. I was feeling a little culture shock by that stage, compounded by tiredness.

For a country all my friends said, "You don't need to know Japanese", there certainly was a distinct absence of English around. Fortunately, I still remember words like, Hello, Good Morning, Thank you, Excuse me, Dont Understand, Sorry. Some newer words that I've picked up also came in handy like Bill, Receipt, 2 people.

Today, we still had not activated our JR Rail Pass because we are here 16 days while we only have a 14 day JR Rail Pass. So we walked and we walked, and walked and walked and then rested, then walked again.

I don't know if it's me or what, but the Minato-ku area seems to have not much for tourists. Sure theres cheap eats that are easy to be found, and the food is delicious! There's also a couple of things to look at like in Rappongi. But thats not really Minato-ku anymore really. So walking has it's limitations because we can't go that far. We went to Tokyo Tower, which has a couple of observation decks. It's shaped similar to the Eiffle Tower but a little taller. We visited a couple of shrines and temples but things didn't really pick up until we decided to walk to Ginza in the evening.

*Aside* As I type this you certainly see a lot of random things on Japanese TV.

Anyway back to Ginza. It is no short walk to get to Ginza, maybe 30 minutes from Shiba Park Hotel. But the walk was WELL worth it! The bright lights the huge buildings the array of departmental stores all standing proudly street after street after street, criss-crossed with sidestreets of restaurant after restaurant can only be described as mind blowing for a lil' ol' Brisbanite who's never visited a big city.

The main drag was filled with the trendiest shops while even shops like Armani sat humbly 3 blocks behind. We were starving and stumbled across a small sushi bar. A Japanese couple (I assume, because of how they were dressed), were waiting outside to be seated. A waitress advised it would be over 30minutes wait for us. We were tired of walking so were happy to wait with the already waiting couple.

Again, our patience was worth it. The service was impressive. Our waitress new English which was very helpful for us. There were 3 chefs in front of us to assemble our orders. They are very animated and the experience felt very personal and intimate. If you've ever had tepanyaki... that is the kind of chef/customer relationship I'm talking about. And the sushi was the best I'd ever had, but could you really expect any less, it being Japan?

To conclude, pretty awesome first day, and I'm even leaving out a few random good bits that happened throughout the day.