Hello blog!!
I've never written a blog or a journal in my life so I'm not sure how this is supposed to go, but here goes nothing. A couple of months ago, Patty and I decided to drop everything and go on the trip of our dreams - a months-long trek across the globe on a minuscule daily budget and few personal belongings. A mind-numbingly number of annoying little tasks later, here we are in Tokyo, just about to set foot on what we hope will be the trip of a lifetime.
Waking up to a morning in Tokyo is surprisingly similar to waking up to a morning in Winnipeg. Though, after traveling for about 24 hours yesterday, maybe we are ready to call anything home. Our hostel is a modest place in a back alley just off a busy street. It's very quiet and has none of the scariness of back alleys back in Winnipeg. People are walking, biking, and jogging just outside. The staff have been friendly and our room is clean. We seem to be located within a relatively short walking distance of some temples, which we've decided we'll check out today.
Our flights were pretty straightforward. We left Winnipeg around 9am local time, landed in Minneapolis around 10:30am, and then left around 2:30pm direct to Tokyo. The flight was 13 hours long, which is by far the longest flight I've ever been on. We mostly kept busy watching movies and sleeping. Patty has been sick and we were concerned with the changing pressure on ascent and descent, but everything turned out to be OK in the end. I think the descent into Tokyo was the worst for her, but some drugs and a hot compress on her face seemed to help.
We landed in Tokyo around 5:30pm local time and quickly passed through customs. It seemed that almost everyone on our flight was continuing onto other destinations, so we were thankfully zipped along a different route. Once we were through, there was very conveniently a ticket booth to the subway/train system directly in front of us. After a minute or two of discussion, the service rep had figured out what route to take and we bought our tickets.
Getting onto the train was easy enough. So far the people we have encountered here have been extremely friendly and helpful. We were confused several times, but managed to muddle through several conversations typically consisting of both rudimentary English and hand signals. The train ride itself actually took over an hour, which was like torture after a long day, particularly because we had to stand for the vast majority of the time. The train was extremely busy for most of the ride. We had one transfer and again muddled our way through. We met another couple from England who had also just arrived and we were traveling in the same direction as them, so that helped. They had already spent one month in the US and Canada and one month in New Zealand. Weird to think that that will also be us pretty soon.
Once we reached our stop, we spent about 15 minutes following some bad advice and bickering about where we were, when we stumbled upon our hostel. It was around 7:30pm local time. Some kind of food party had just ended when we arrived, and there was a boatload of people in the tiny first floor space, and let's just say the welcoming aroma was not pleasant. It was warm and humid last night, which didn't help! (Thankfully, nothing is left of the smell this morning, and the hostel has proven to quite nice). After we were led to our room, which is a four-person dorm, we had nothing left in us and just went to bed. The flight had fed us very well, so neither of us had been hungry.
So there you have it, day #1! I'll try to include some pics in the next post.
Jeff
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