And Away We Go...

After leaving the house on Saturday morning at 6:00am (Thanks for the ride Adrianne!), we arrived at the Tokyo International Hostel at 6:00am Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, a full 24 hour door to door journey.

The flight from Pearson was delayed by a 1/2 hour, for some undisclosed reason, though Sarah says that no flights appeared to be leaving during that period of time. I was already having a nap!

We arrived at O'Hare International Airport late, providing us with just enough time to leisurely walk from the one end of Terminal 1 to the other and board our flight for Tokyo. Another 1/2 hour delay was experienced when a heat sensor from one of the engines needed to be replaced. Great!

The 13 hour flight to Tokyo, afforded us the time to catch up on some of the movies (Blood Diamond, The Holiday, and Happy Feet), as well as some extremely uncomfortable sleep!

Japan appears to be about a month ahead of our spring, as grass is green, the trees have leaves and flowers are blooming everywhere. The 1 hour train ride from Narita International Airport into Ueno Station showed us that we weren't in North American any longer.

Trying to buy a simple Tokyo-Metro ticket for 160 Yen ($1.50 CAN) became my biggest challenge of the day! Having read the maps and watched others purchase tickets from the vending machines, I stepped up to the plate. Inserting 1000 Yen bill, I selected 2 tickets for 160 Yen each. A "pass" for 3000 Yen popped out, then an alarm on the machine and a light started to flash. Not sure what had transpired, I quickly walked away, knowing I didn't have what I wanted, but not knowing what I had either. Sarah and I watched from a safe distance as a couple of people walked up to the machine and were unable to get it to work. In less than 1 1/2 hours, I had already wrecked something. Luckily we picked another machine and got the proper tickets. The "bonus" pass will definitely come in handy.

We arrived at the hostel by dusk, freshened up and went out for a tour of the area. We got our first laugh, venturing into the first floor of a four storey mall, where we saw a brand of baby clothes called "Laugh & Cheap". That brought up one of Sarah's memories from teaching in Korea, where a young female student was wearing a t-shirt that said "Just do me!", trying to innocently copy Nike's "Just do it!" advertising. Ah, the art of translation!

We gained our next experience, walking back towards the hostel, as an older gentlemen was watering some of those nice blooming flowers mentioned earlier.

Finally, we chose a 180Yen Noodle restaurant for our first meal. Luckily for us, we also pointed to the right dishes to eat!

As it's 4:30am, I better head back up stairs and grab another hours sleep, before todays adventures begin!