Category: travel things!

Lazy-ish Friday and lazy Saturday

So, Friday I finally got tired of using the trackpad on my Macbook, and decided to scope out an electronics store nearby to buy a mouse. I debated about going all the way to Akihabara just to get a mouse, but it seemed like overkill, plus I wanted to spend a long time at Akihabara. What I did was find a smaller electronics chain called “Yamada” which happened to have a store in a shopping mall not too far away. So, I set out on a short(?) 2 mile walk to an area called Toyosu, which is on some reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.

It took me about an hour at a leisurely pace, I had the option of taking the Metro but figured I need the exercise. When I got there, after roaming around trying to find the front door 🙂 I went in to go to the 2nd floor. I was amazed to ride up on, not an escalator, but an angled moving walkway, like a moving ramp! I’ve never seen or heard of such a thing, but there it was! It felt weird standing on it, as my feet weren’t flat on a step.

It worked okay, and I got to the top and into the mall proper. It only took a few minutes to find the store, and I got my mouse. On my way out I stopped at a small French bakery, called “Boulanger VAGUE”. At least I think I did… 🙂

After I left the mall I debated about walking back, but foolishly decided to take the Metro, at the tail end of rush hour! It wasn’t as crowded as you may have seen, but it was pretty packed in the station. I only rode one stop, then changed trains and rode another stop to my station. That was the only thing I really did on Friday, so I was kind of lazy, until I did my walking.

Saturday started cold and rainy, and hasn’t improved at all except to stop actually raining, and only threatening. I thought about doing my laundry (I only brought a few shirts and things, enough for 5 or 6 days depending on how offensive I want to smell 🙂 and realized I don’t have any laundry detergent! So, now I have to go to either the grocery store or one of the drugstores near me to pick some up. Also have to get some bars of soap (I’m old-fashioned, never got the hang of the “body wash” stuff) and probably grab something to eat. All in all, a very low-energy, lazy Saturday.

Some pictures on my first walkabout.

So, Wednesday morning broke nice and clear, except for the dust blowing over Tokyo from China, but otherwise the day started nice. I decided I would walk around the neighborhood a bit, to see if I could see any cherry trees blooming along the Sumida River, which is about a quarter-mile from my apartment. I made my way down to the riverbank, which has a park and walkway all along the river on both sides, and started north.

After walking for a while, I found that I was very close to one of the city’s parks, Kiyosumi Gardens. I decided to go ahead and check out the park, which is a nice, well laid-out Japanese garden, with hundreds of interesting rocks from all over Japan, and some wildlife in the form of birds and turtles, as well as hungry koi fish in the large pond/small lake. They charge a small admission fee, and I was able to finagle the senior rate, which was 70 yen, or about 45 cents! Who says Japan is expensive! 🙂 Sadly there were no cherry blossoms, but there were some flowering bushes, not sure what kind though.

After strolling through the park for a while, making a full circuit of the paths, I decided to get some lunch, and on my way out the gate I saw a Denny’s down the block! Unfortunately, at 1:30 PM they had a lot of people waiting, especially families, so I changed my plans and started walking down the street. I ended up going into this little ramen shop and having a big bowl with a side of rice and pickled cabbage. The ramen had a piece of pork so well cooked it practically fell apart in my chopsticks, and the noodles were cooked just firm enough, and the broth was really really good and salty.

Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of the shop or the food, I didn’t ask permission and I didn’t want to be one of “those” tourists and act like I owned the place, so you’ll have to use your imagination. It was a whole universe better than any cup ramen you might have had, though!

From there, my trek took me on a subway ride to Shinjuku to the apartment office to tell them of a maintenance issue I had, and then back to Monzennakacho on a different train line. When I got back to the apartment I checked my health app on my phone and found that I had walked over 5 miles! I hadn’t intended to walk quite that far on my first day, but thankfully I have been working up to it over the past year or so.

Anyway, that’s all for Wednesday! I took Thursday off so I could get these pictures ready!

So, where the heck am I?

Okay, I’m settled into my apartment now, got a lot of the things I need to live here for the next 60-ish days, so I thought I’d do a quick walk-around to show where I’m staying. It’s not very long, because it’s not a very big apartment!

So, basically I’m here, in Tokyo, staying at an apartment building owned by Sakura House, which is a company that rents exclusively to foreigners on a monthly basis, which for me here is about $1000 per month at the current exchange rate. It’s pretty centrally located, as you can see by where the Emperor lives in relation!

So, this little video will explain what my apartment in that building looks like. It’s not large but it’s comfortable and affordable, and I can keep all my stuff here.

After landing in Japan, worn out.

So, after getting to Nashville BNA Airport, walking from the airport Hilton at 4 AM, I managed to get on the flight to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport with plenty of time to spare. The BNA->DFW flight was uneventful, I got to DFW on time and got to the gate for the flight to Japan, and that’s when it all went FUBAR.

The plane scheduled to fly us to Narita Airport in Japan was sitting being “maintenanced”, for an unspecified problem (at least they wouldn’t tell us). To top it off, the flight was overbooked, and they kept asking for volunteers who had “flexible flight plans” to get re-booked on a later flight. Who in their right mind is that “flexible” about flying to Japan?

At any rate, they had no ETR for the repair work, and kept posting new estimated departure times, 30 minutes at a time. Once maintenance was finished, they had to hustle us onto the plane so the flight crew could take off without running out of their allotted flying time, we were settled in, the captain announced they had paperwork to complete, but about 10 minutes later announced we had to “deplane”, since they ran out of time.

Once we were back in the terminal, they announced that a new crew was being sought, and that they would fly that plane to Japan, just later than planned. It was supposed to leave DFW at 12:05 PM, but it was almost 5 when they made us play “plane-deplane”. Once they had a crew scheduled they had to get them to the airport, so they scheduled the new departur at 7:45 PM, almost 8 hours later. This meant we’d arrive in Japan at 11:20 PM on Sunday evening.

At the appointed time, we boarded again (with some trepidation) but we ended up staying on the plane, until it took off sometime after 8 PM Saturday night. The flight itself was uneventful, and we landed at the scheduled time. It took only a few minutes to get through Immigration and Customs, I had to show the paperwork for my 2 month supply of prescription meds, and then I managed to catch the last train from the airport, headed into Narita town and my hotel.

If it works, this video I shot in the hotel room, just after midnight, just before I crashed. I recovered and went into Tokyo later Monday morning and picked up the key to my apartment, but that’s for a later post.