Sunady January 22nd 2023 - Arriving in Tokyo - Japan trip for work, day 1.5 - About 5 miles of walking

Conveniently for blogging, it's Sunday here.  but for my body and mind it's the end of a very very long Saturday.

I got in 1 more brief nap on the plane and then had another chicken curry since everybody seemed to be eating something and there wasn't much else to do.  Other than having some storage space and air vents I'm not sure what would really help a flight that long.  Maybe the return flight will seem better or maybe not.  I was glad to get it behind me.  Interestingly, the anxiety and weirdness I felt about not being able to figure things, looking like a jerk or whatever was on my mind almost completely evaporated when I got off the flight. 

The airport (Haneda for my flight today) has an unbelievable number of helper employees who just direct people walking and check to make sure you have your passport out or your QR code from the multi stage paperwork you certainly should have done before arrival etc etc.  There were 3 pieces between getting off the plane and in any useful sense being able to exit the airport.  Quarantine, which was really just attesting to not having any meats or prohibited items. Almost everybody was waved by the quarantine desk because some of the many helpers before them had already given everybody with a 'quarantine ok' QC code a half sheet of pink paper with some tips on it that also identified people who didn't need inspecting. The 2nd step was immigration.   This too had a lot of pre-work done on a website at least a week before arrival for anybody who was paying attention.  The customs and immigration area is enormous and the line snaked back and forth about 3 times but had room to snake about 12 times which would be ugly.  Then, like a supersized Fry's electronics checkout, somebody either directed you to 1 of the dozen or so desks near where the line snake ended or sent you way down to one of the other helpers dozens of booths farther down the row. There were 40 (!) immigration desks active today.  They took 2 fingerprints and a photo which come into play later.  The last step was customs. This was the most annoying and poorest organized of the steps.  If you had done THAT part of the pre-arrival paperwork correctly you just had to find a kiosk (similar to an airline self service kiosk) and then wait in a hopefully short line to scan your photo page from your passport and your Customs QR code.  Once that was done you could proceed to the exit which actually did photo recognition and let people pass one by one as the system recognized people. 

All that legal stuff taken care of, the next steps were getting cash, buying a Suica card (basically a nearly universally accepted transit value card that can also be used at ATMs and convenience stores) and of course, getting to the hotel.  The ATM (money from my personal account for incidentals) and the Suica Card (work paid for) were right next to each other and fundamentally not that different than their rough US equivalents.  The signage at the monorail platforms didn't seem very clear but I was sure I wanted to head towards Hamamatsucho and one of the 2 platforms clearly did that.  When I got on the train it said it was a local train so it made all 8 stops or whatever and some trains only stop at about half the stops.  Still, it wasn't long trip and the monorail goes over some fascinating ups and downs and curves and often is built out over water.  It was very scenic and not very busy.  Then at Hamamatsucho I was supposed to get on a certain JR train.  I didn't understand Googles instructions and thought it was saying route Y28 but now I think it was saying that Hamamatsucho (where I transferred from monorail to JR East) was station 28 on the Y line.  After getting on the thing that seemed most like what I thought I was looking for I knew immediately it was wrong based on the next station it stopped at.  Thankfully at that 'wrong' station I was able to figure out the directions better and took yet another train just 1 long stop to get off at the Shinagawa station which is EXTREMELY large.  But I made it out the suggested West entrance and there in front of me was the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, my home for the next 6 days.

It actually took more like 10 minutes to find the hotel because Shinagawa isn't really a hotel or a hotel with a few towers.  It is an insane mega property with multiple hotel towers, a bowling alley, a shopping center, a food court, several fine dining restaurants, an IMAX theater, a normal theater (separate things), a bowling alley and an aqua park (think mini Sea World).  Navigating through it all the first time was tough.  The reception/check in area for the Annex tower where I'm staying is actually on the 7th floor.  Check-in was easy and I was so glad to finally see my room and the view from it.

As I usually do, I put my clothes in the dresser drawers so I don't have to look and feel like I'm living out of my suitcase.  Then I dutifully turned off the weird masking noise on the toilet and made sure it didn't spray water anywhere unexpected.  The heated seat doesn't seem to have an off setting though, just low and hi which is odd.  Then I took a bubbly bath in the very deep but not very long tub. It felt wonderful.

Even after all this it was around 5:30. So I headed out for a rambling long walk (about 2 hours) just to get my first dose of being here in Tokyo.  There are a lot of hills and tiny neighborhood parks and little shrines and historical monuments at least in this part of Tokyo.  I was repeatedly impressed with how consistently quiet it was.  Even big busy intersections were very mellow with seemingly no loud vehicles at all.  Most of the commercial vehicles like taxis seem to be hybrids so some familiar regenerative braking whirring noises.  And EVERYBODY follows the lights.  The cars, the bicycles and the pedestrians, even when there is no traffic and it seems perfectly clear you could just cross, you wait for the light.

I made my first person to person purchase on my walk.  I wanted a light meal and saw some very small food stalls near another train station,  The Kebab sandwiches looked great and they were really cheap (500 yen) so I finally opened my mouth and actually uttered a few words of Japanese.  I kept thinking I should try on the flight over but between the face mask and the noise of flying, they barely understood me in my most confident attempt at English, Japanese would have just been awkward,  And as it turned out Kebab guy has pretty good English so this didn't really count either but at least I was brave. :) The snack was so good.  Walking around eating food is considered rude here so I just stood on the sidewalk to the side of the Kebab stall and ate it right there.  Thankfully it wasn't a particularly busy area.

From that point I started blindly trying to feel my way back to the hotel which didn't really work but by the time I used my phone for directions I was able to come back without retracing my steps down the large relatively boring main road that parallels the train tracks.  Now I'm ready for bed.  I meet my coworker at 8:30 AM in the lobby before we head into 'the office'.  I'm very excited to be here.