The plan

So, it’s time again… When I came home from Japan last time I said I wouldn’t go back for another good while, but hey, whatever happens happens, and since so many of my friends were interested in going I of course had to come along as well. We’ll be 6 people in total at maximum, four of them having already spent a week in Kyoto and Osaka at this point, and me and the last friend are flying into Tokyo today.

It’s really been an experience trying to plan all this out. People arriving and leaving at different times, four different hotels in total for different groups, one not even being booked as I’m writing this, and finally I have probably packed the lightest suitcase I’ve ever had on a plane before, which certainly is an experience for a three week vacation in Japan.

In any case, enough of the preamble, and onto the actual trip!

The bad decisions really begin the day before the trip (arguably even earlier but cut me some slack here), I had decided my backside garden just required getting mowed and sorted before I left, and I’d of course also left the last of the laundry for the very last second too. Through some miracle I did manage to get the apartment and garden looking quite presentable, but I ended up procrastinating doing the laundry, so much so that when I finally got started on it at 2-3 am I realised that I wouldn’t be doing a lot of sleeping that night, considering my train left just before 9 am, and I still had to shower and pack and whatnot.

A sleepless night it was in other words, but honestly, it hasn’t been all that bad yet. It’s still far from the end of the day of course (sadly I’m not able to sleep very well on the plane). The spare time allowed me to prepare very properly at least, and I walked to the train station just in time to catch my train. Mum was there to see me off and take my keys, which was very sweet, though she was a bit worried that I wouldn’t make it.

Flying there

our flying chariot to Japan

I meet my friend at the central station, and we get on the train to the airport together. I had bought tickets earlier since I had to take a train into town as well, so we just sit down and relax, eventually getting into the airport (as it later turns out I was so tired I had forgotten to actually activate my ticket, so now I have a spare 2 person ticket to the airport… Whoops?).

The airport has been rebuilt somewhat recently, so finding my way was a bit of a challenge, but eventually we picked what we thought would be a likely area for the plane to show up and sat down to rest a bit. Turns out we were wrong, and when we’d decided what end of the place to go to, we had selected the wrong one. Thankfully there was time to spare, so we managed to make it to our gate with time to spare.

Then it was simply the case of the plane ride. We played some Mario Cart DS versus each other, watched a movie, and then I wrestled a bit with this blog (I had forgotten to upgrade some stuff before I went on the plane, so I wasn’t able to actually test anything at all unfortunately. Hopefully everything will just work when we land!).

Quite good food for both dinner and breakfast

I got a very nice potato mash and chicken meal, whilst my friend got a vegetarian thing she had ordered, and we also got ourselves some actually quite decent SAS branded IPA as well. Welp, with all that out of the way I’m gonna do my best to actually get some sleep, and hopefully I’ll be at least somewhat conscious when we actually arrive in Tokyo!

After a quick breakfast of yogurt sandwiches and fresh fruit we finaly landed. The next fews steps were me buying a suica card and then us taking a few metros and finally we ended up in the apartment. It was incredibly warm the entire way there (upwards of 35 degrees warm, with like 80% humidity), and apparently it’s only going to get warmer…

First day in japan

Yshtola from FFXIV in all her glory

The rest of the day (we got there at 8am, so there was still plenty to do) was spent getting some lunch, wandering into some random convenience stores where I found Magic the Gathering and FFXIV crossover items, folders specifically, and decided I’ll have to re-visit and have a good look at them later. After lounging about for a while, heading over to visit two other friends who have lived here for the past few months. The ramen we got at the ramen store On the way over we also had some amazing ramen noodles at a random place in the wall we walked by. Finally, as we were heading back on the train, my dear travel partner saw an advert for a game show on the train and, briefly forgetting the culture she was in, pointed at it and proclaimed “Yaoi!” She immediately realised what she had done, and after briefly locking eyes with an older gentlemen on the train proceeded to spend the rest of the train trip in shame. What a wonderful start to our adventure.

Gonna try to keep my excerpts a bit briefer to hopefully this time I’ll actually manage to write something about every day and upload it as I go. I’ll also try to finish up the last diary as I go (I’m still writing on it, I just have a lot of notes to go through).

go to: Next day