After the delays from the pandemic, I am so excited we now begin our 2023 trip to Japan! Our trip started late Thursday in Kalamazoo, when we hopped in the car and drove to Chicago. Mona found us a nice Hampton Inn to stay, one we could leave our car for the next few weeks. We drove to Chicago and as we parked, a gentleman stopped me and asked me for a jump. I grabbed my battery pack from the trunk and was quickly able to give him a jump. It was the third time we had used this to jump start someone's car. It is awesome to see something so inexpensive being so useful! We had to get an early start, because we wanted to fly out of Chicago on an earlier flight. Our current flight only left us 40 minutes for making our connection, and that's a bit risky. We did not want to leave Kylee in Japan all by herself any longer than necessary. It took some maneuvering to get to an airline agent to help us so early in the morning, but the agent was able to get us on standby for the flight. Sure enough, we were numbers one and two on the standby list; we easily got ourselves on the earlier flight. In Dulles, it was easy enough to get around and get to our gate to catch our next flight. Once we were aboard the plane and on our way, 14 hours seemed to roll on by.
We passed the time watching movies and dozing, until we got nearer and nearer to Japan. Upon landing, I had a number of tasks to try and fulfill. First, I wanted to pick up the pocket Wi-Fi I had rented for the next two weeks. Next up, I needed to go to the JR Rail counter and exchange our vouchers for our actual coupons we would use to book our tickets for the next two weeks. Finally, I needed to get in line and get the Welcome Suica card, the touch-and-go pass card for the subway.
Picking up the wifi router was easy; the line at the Jr Rail counter took almost an hour.
However, the helpful agent also sold me all three Welcome Suica cards, which kept me out of the line for the Suica. Now that we have these useful tools, we have a wide array of monorails, trains, subways, busses available for use. Japan's extensive transportation network includes more than two dozens companies across the country, each providing different (private) rail lines and such. An interesting note is, Suica is shared by a number of transportation vendors across Japan, so you can use the card on different providers' rail lines in areas like Hokkaido, Osaka and others!
You'd think now that we'd use these new transportation methods to get out of Haneda Airport and into greater Tokyo, right? Wrong! It takes a while to get to our hotel on public transporation; we chose to cut our time in half by hailing a Taxi!
Check-in at the Hotel Asakusa View Annex was interesting. While our reservations were correct, we were unable to use the kiosk activate our room keys. Returning to the main desk, the staffer was easily able to confirm our booking and issue keys.
Our hotel features an excellent view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, so we headed up to a spiffy lounge with a stunning night view.
Kylee tried her hand at matcha coffee, but Mona and I passed (we'll be asleep soon!)
Heading down to the street, we discovered the quiet neighborhood featured an array of restaurants and a few convenience stores. Called "konbini" (KON-bee-nee) in Japan, they offer a wider variety of fresh foods than US convenience stores. Before turning in for the evening, we strolled around a bit and grabbed a few snacks from a konbini. Tomorrow should prove to be a busy, exciting day!
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