The trip from Chicago to Tokyo is just around 12.5 hours. The flight goes north through Canada, west along the southern part of Alaska, and then down some easterny part of Russia before reaching Japan. We had an empty seat next to us (yay!), so we had an entire row to ourselves.
Normally, the empty seat means I spend most of the flight curled up in a ball of petulance, attempting to sleep despite being poked in the side by the seatbelt or other parts of the seat.
The JAL plane, however, had wifi. Sky-fi. And not your average ugh-everything-is-so-slow-why-did-I-give-gogo-money wifi, but good wifi. I bought wifi access and because I had spent $20 on expensive-ass plane wifi, I stayed up longer than I would have and squeezed every last drop of internet out of the wifi. I was beholden to the Sky-fi and not to sleep. I amused myself with chat and cat gifs for the majority of the flight.
Upon descending into Tokyo, the flight attendants and pilots warned us at least 15 times about a turbulent landing. Excellent. My favorite thing. Towards the end, they gave up translating most of the messages into English: they would give a long message in Japanese about proper buckling of seatbelts and tray tables, stowing of things if you are in first class etc, and the English equivalent was “Please buckle your seatbelt.” Ok then.
The landing was actually not even that turbulent in the end…we landed, got our things (our luggage was first out – thanks first class Chicago leg!), and while Grant was getting his money changed, I was of course pounced upon by a film crew for some Japanese TV show.
The last time I was in Japan, this happened on day two or three of our trip, while we were in Harauku at the Daiso. That film crew was not expecting us to be able to answer in Japanese, nor identify that they had handed us some eraser packages. (“What do you think this is?” the other film crew had asked us and handed us a packet of erasers. “Um, it says keshigomu, so these are erasers?” we replied.) We were good sports and chomped on the food-shaped erasers anyway so they could amuse their Japanese audiences with our foreigner antics.
This one was a test of my rusty Japanese brain as I accidentally answered them in Japanese in the beginning. We had a nice chat about curry and what I liked about Japan (food and the polite people!), and why specifically curry 🍛❤️ (Props to my awesome host mom for being a wizard cook) was my favorite thing, before I was released to go fight with the ATMs.
There is something about being in Narita airport and ONLY in the Narita airport that none of my bank cards like. Last time, I was not ready for it. I had only Indian rupees (which the money changer did not accept) and ten dollars.
This time, I was prepared for complete and utter rejection by three ATMs that claimed to accept foreign cards, including one post office ATM. The post office has never let me down before 🙁 I resigned to using the money changers despite my disdain for the rates they give you. Boo.
We made it to our Air B&B near Tokyo station without incident, and after quick words with our banks to fix our cards (which were not broken, and apparently the code on the front of your Amex functions as the PIN when you’re overseas, who knew?!), we popped out to Akihabara because it was close. And rainy. And rush hour.
Yesss rush hour, where all the people squish onto the trains with each other. In London, they regulate how many people can get on, with people forming orderly lines and waiting a few trains. Not in Japan. I was pleased and moderately surprised I had some room to move after all the people got in. Success!
We wandered the rainy electric streets of Akihabara in an adrenaline-fueled stupor for about an hour or two. We went into a few different buildings and my favorite souvenir/figure shop near the station. Since Tokyo is our last stop on our itinerary, major shopping would have to wait until we got back to Tokyo in a few weeks…
Next stop: Kyoto on the 7:23 AM Nozomi super-express. We don’t have a specific plan, besides getting to Fushimi-Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社) after we arrive around 9:45.