After an exhausting 11 or 12 hour plane journey I finally touched down on Japanese soil. The trip was pretty exhausting and I think I only managed to get an hour’s sleep (which I believe was 1 hour before we landed and was subsequently awakened by the air hostess), The food on the plane was surprisingly good, with a choice of 2 meals, both of which were Japanese style and neither of which were brought back up, so a good result I would say. My seating position was unfortunately in the middle of 2 people, although there was no fat French man this time so it was more bearable, even so, I would have killed for a window seat as I constantly had to avoid napping on someone else’s shoulder.
When I got off the plane I could feel the force of the Japanese summer, but I just had to put my head down and work through it. Our first port of call was immigration and it was probably the longest I’ve have ever had to wait to officially get into a country. For a start the queue was never-ending and it literally took about 1 and a half hours to get to the main desk, where we were photographed, fingerprinted and stamped. I guess my plans of becoming a master criminal and escaping Japan undetected have been ruined. After I managed to make it down the stairs I had to pick up my luggage, which was graciously waiting for me beside the turnstile, a big relief I can tell you. Then off I went through the entry doors of Japan, minus a short bag inspection of course. As I passed through the doors I had a friendly greeting from some American Jet as she said “Welcome to Japan”, which was surprisingly said rather energetically even though it must have been the 1000th time she had probably said it. I was then directed along a corridor of Jet helpers that made it practically impossible to wander in the wrong direction in my sleep deprived state. At the half way point for a short information stop I felt like getting a drink, however of course I only had a 1000 yen note and the vending machine gave to change. “Oh crap, I thought to myself” so I asked for change but no-one had the correct amount. Though as I was about to resign myself to the fact I wouldn’t have a drink for awhile, one of the Jet helpers bought me a bottle of green tea, it really made my first day in Japan a good memory and made up for the exhaustion from the plane and the airport, its just a shame I wanted a coke….
Once we left the airport on our jet bus we headed to the “Keio Plaza” hotel in the heart of Tokyo, well Shinjuku. We got to see the beautiful smog eclipse city of Tokyo as we crossed the bridge on the way in and although the majority of people were half asleep I tried to see as much as I could. When we arrived at the hotel we went through a pretty painless checking in procedure (everything along the way from the airport to the hotel was done perfectly by Jet and really helped everyone). As it was about 8.30pm by that time and everyone was confused as to whether we should be awake or asleep, I decided I would have an early night after some food, so me and my roommate Richard headed over to the nearby family mart (remembering every step we took so we could get back without trouble) and bought a bit of food before we headed back.
And so was the end of my first day in Japan (for the 2nd time) aside from the fact that I got like 1 hour sleep if that and the rest of the time was spend staring at the ceiling wondering why the hell I couldn’t get to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment