I guess it's technically day 4 in Japan, but it's only our third full day, and that's what I'm counting. Let's start with the journey here.
Wednesday night late, Charlotte's sister Emilie was nice enough to pop by and drive us to the airport for our 12:55 AM flight to Atlanta. Now that we're married and living in the burbs, 12:55 is kinda late. Luckily, we were excited to be on the road so tiredness was not a problem. For those who don't know, we're taking this trip flying standby all the way. Charlotte's dad has flight benefits from Delta and he was kind enough to throw a buddy pass my way. Anyway, we got on our first flight without a problem.
The next flight was at 10:00 AM Eastern direct to Tokyo. I figured out that if we could stay up until that flight started, that we'd nearly be adjusted to Japanese time in one day. Well, that didn't quite happen, but near enough. We only slept a little on the flight to Atlanta and Charlotte drifted in and out in the airport once we got there.
Flying standby can be a bit stressful if you're not used to it. On the plus side, you have cheap tickets. On the negative side, you might end up spending a day or three of your vacation in some airport. Another mark on the positive side with our situation is that we had the potential of getting bumped to business class. It didn't happen on the way to Atlanta, but it did on the way to Tokyo! Business class made a big difference in our getting lots of sleep on the way to Japan. Thanks again, Roelf!
OK, enough about the flights. I just managed to turn caps-lock on for this keyboard and it won't go off. I can already see this tragedy impacting the length of this blog entry!
Our first night in Tokyo we ducked into this little corner sushi place. Now I am a big sushi fan, and I have been to a lot of good American sushi restaurants, including ones in coastal cities. The sushi I had in this random Tokyo restaurant was 10 times better than any sushi I have had anywhere else. I even found myself loving things like uni (sea urchin), which I had never liked. I can only hope that we are not completely ruined when it comes to eating sushi back home.
Anyway, we spent the next day wandering around Tokyo with the idea of spending another one there on the way out of the country. We walked a ton and saw only a tiny bit of what the city has to offer. We targetted the Tsukiji fish market since we figured we'd be up before dawn anyway. After successfully navigating to the Tsukiji metro stop mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide we walked though many narrow streets filled with bustling sushi restaurants (at 8:00 AM no less!) and boothes selling fresh fish as well as other sundry delights. We were headed out of the neighborhood toward the city center to see other things when we saw this sign: "Tsukiji Fish Market, 350m". We'd managed to see all the surrounding shops NEAR the fish market but had entirely missed the market itself! Once we realized our error, we headed over in that direction, but the market was closing. Needless to say, we plan to hit that market the day we leave Japan. We won't accept defeat that easily!
Yesterday we took the train to Takayama via Nagoya. I'm writing from our hotel 2 miles from the city center. We've walked back and forth a couple times already, but since we did 10 miles of walking before 2:00 PM today, we've decided to take the bus from now on! Those 10 miles of walking were a lot of fun, though. We saw a lot of the city including its historic center thronging with Japanese tourists taking advantage of the holiday week here. We also ended up seeing quite a few temples and shrines, found a little wooded area with benches and engraved rocks that felt like a shrine, and had a noodle lunch in a lovely hill-top park area before heading back here for an afternoon nap. Speaking of which, I'm going to see if Charlotte's awake from hers yet. Sayonara for now!
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