Using our trusty driver, Gary Spiezer, we arrived at the airport on November 4th in plenty of time to catch our flight to Detroit. Both of our Delta flights left exactly on time. The plane to Tokyo was filled. It appeared that most of the passengers were tourists. I don’t know how a family with 2 little boys managed to keep them under control for 13 hours, but they did.
Our economy comfort plus seats gave us extra legroom, and supposedly, better snacks. The meals served (dinner and lunch) were adequate. As for the service, it was nothing to rave about, but nothing to complain about either. Another perk was that we each got a pillow, blanket, and slippers, along with a packet filled with a blindfold, ear plugs, toothbrush and tooth paste.
We sat next to a very nice man, who happened to be a former priest. Since he had the aisle seat we were fortunate that he got up to walk around about as much as we did.
We arrived in Tokyo a half hour early at 5:10 PM on November 5th. (The time difference between Twinsburg and Japan is 14 hours.) It was an incredibly lengthy walk from the gate to baggage—at least a mile. We lucked out in that a woman driving a cart took pity on us and gave us a lift part of the way. The line through immigration was long, but would have been much worse had we not filled out the Japan Web questionnaire in advance of leaving home. Doing so saved us a lot of time.
We also felt that we wasted an awful lot of time worrying about Japan’s strict rules dealing with medications. We followed the requirements carefully packing everything in their original bottles. I even followed their instructions to get a note from my doctor explaining why I needed my CPAP machine. No one checked a thing.
We had booked a driver to pick us up at the airport through booking.com. He communicated with us through WhatsApp. Fortunately it wasn’t too difficult to find him and he got us to our hotel in about 35 minutes. The check-in clerks at Tokyo Stay Ginza were super nice. They even had us try a gotcha, gotcha machine (kind of a gumball machine, except it had plastic balls with different messages inside of each of them.) We won two ceramic Japanese theater faces, so we are already collecting stuff.
It has been an extremely long day and we are too tired to go out to eat. Right across the street from our hotel is a Lawsons convenience store (konbini in Japanese). I had been told that the egg salad at these places was delicious, so I picked that out along with rice balls made with fried chicken inside held together by seaweed. We also picked up a bottle of ice tea so strong it was difficult to drink. The egg salad was very good, but I’m not sold on the rice balls yet.
Now its time to settle down and go to bed. Hopefully we’ll feel refreshed enough to enjoy a full day of exploring tomorrow.
