The Journey to Tokyo (or, "How We Rolled")

We were too wiped out after 24 hours of travel to write anything of substance last night. I'll try to fill in some details.

The Rosenthals started us off right. Our last home-cooked American meal included Rachel's dads fantastic barbeque beef. I hope I'm not giving too much away but he sears it on the grill and then slow cooks it for an hour or something. Her mom cooked up some great veggies and rice. I made sure to scarf what I suspect will be the last meal in two months whose component ingredients are not dubious in nature.

The alarm went off at 6 AM. After a cup of coffee and a look at the paper to confirm that the state of the US economy was still completely F'd, we hit the road. As Rachel's dad drove us to JFK, I observed that prosperous New York City suburbs often disguise large utility poles as trees by affixing fake branches to them. True story.

We arrived at the airport to discover that our 11:45 flight had been delayed until 12:30 and we had a good four hour wait ahead of us. JFK is basically a mall with airplane parking so we found plenty to do to kill time. When we finally rolled up to the gate, we got a taste of what the next two months were going to be like. The Boeing 777 carries between 283 and 368 passengers. We were two of about five non-Asians on the thing.

When we return, we will have a new president-elect. Bush made sure to do one last thing to piss me off before we left the US. We sat on the tarmac for a half an hour while Air Force One landed.

The flight wasn't too bad. We somehow lucked out and got seats with unlimited leg-room and Tetris! The service was a goddamn joke however. What happened to stewardesses being hot blondes with impeccable manners? Ours were old and weird looking and didn't share a brain cell between them. At one point, one of them poured hot water on my foot.

When we landed and got our first glimpse of Japan, our first thought was, "Looks like New York". We navigated customs pretty well and threw around a little Japanese on our way to the express train to Tokyo.

We took the Narita Express from Teminal 2 to Shinkuku Station in Tokyo. The ride was great. We watched the Tokyo suburbs roll by and caught a glimpse of a huge, beautiful, red sunset. I tried to snap a picture of it but by the time I got my camera out, we had rounded a bend and it was gone. But it was there and we saw it and it was an amazing welcome to Japan.

We navigated the huge Shinjuku train station fairly well and came out of the South Entrance in Tokyo. It was night and the streets were full of people. Shinjuku is what you picture when you picture Tokyo. Big, bright, and over the top. We consulted a map, picked a direction that seemed right and started making our way to the hotel. Rachel spotted it sticking out of the huge buildings around us, making our walk considerably easier.

When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised at how nice the place was. It's only a year old and sports some pretty snazzy decor. Our room is a little small by Western standards but adequate. A nice, big HD TV and free internet access are some of the nicer amenities. The bathroom is also pretty doable. The shower is fairly badass although the top of my head is about an inch from the ceiling.

We dropped our stuff and, after a moment, realized we were on the other side of the goddamn planet. And we had been awake for 24 hours. It was 7 PM in Tokyo, 6 AM back home. We went down to the hotel bar for a celebratory drink but after a glass of wine, neither of us could string a coherent sentence together and we called it a night.