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Tokyo: Arrival

What a journey! We took advantage of a flight deal to get us to Japan via a seemingly slight detour through Singapore. No big deal, right? 

We were very happy to be flying with ANA again - note that being part of a global traveller program (e.g. Nexus) may grant you additional privileges like online check-in. The flight to Singapore was through Japan, and the first leg was pretty uneventful. A few observations on our first post-covid overseas trip: not as many mask wearers as we were expecting in the airports or on the plane, movie selection wasn't as good as before for our ANA flight, soup is still available on ANA flights but you may have to wait as they make it on demand.

The first layover was in Haneda, which was alright, but due to the arrival after regular business hours, there weren't as many stores/restaurants open. We fought to stay awake until the next flight, but found it pretty challenging to keep ourselves alert for the entire 6 hours. The plus side: we were pretty knocked out for the 7-hour journey to Singapore, which was longer than I had anticipated. Our sleep was only interrupted by the occasional flush from the nearby washrooms. More learnings: when you do online check-in for a non-direct flight, you can only select seats for the initial flight 24 hours before the first flight. To select seats for the next flight, you have to do the check-in process again 24 hours before the next flight. I forgot to do the second check-in, so we got the last 2 side-by-side seats that were available, by the toilets. Yay.

All this resulted in us being pretty exhausted by the time we were able to leave the airport in Singapore. We spent our precious few hours eating (Kaya toast, hawker food, lots of fruit drinks) and crashing at a hotel (after taking very much appreciated showers), before heading back to the airport for the last leg of our journey to Tokyo.

When we finally landed at Narita, I braced myself for an intense line-up through customs and then at the JR office. Amazingly, we only waited for a couple of people in the customs line, and one other person at the JR office! My guess is that since Japan dropped the vaccination checks last week, they can clear incoming flights way faster now. Hooray for us! We got our train reservations made, and then were on our way to our hotel.

Quick note here: we did learn our lesson from our last Japan trip to book our hotels as close to the main train stations as possible, but due to some unavoidable last minute booking changes, we weren't able to do this for the first night. I was reminded of this lesson while we were lugging our bags through the streets, up and down stairs, and trying to avoid blocking the crowds on the subway. Sigh. Oh well. At least we knew to get our Suica cards quickly, so we could keep ourselves hydrated along the way with all the vending machines! 

After checking in at the hotel, and freshening up a bit, we headed out for our first meal. Feeling adventurous, we decided to try a very old (established in 1801!) traditional restaurant, serving Dozeu nabe (a stew made from a type of fish) in a very classic tatami mat setting. We picked one of their set menus, and hoped for the best! They brought us a whole set of dishes, many of them featuring the same fish cooked in different ways: in stew with Tokyo green onions, in thick miso soup with burdock, and in an omelette. There were also side dishes: grilled konnyaku and tofu with yuzu miso sauce, rice, and pickled veggies. My opinion - it was definitely a meal that we wouldn't be able to find outside Japan, but the dishes may not be to everyone's taste. Overall, I'd say it was worth trying once - our stomachs probably appreciated the healthy food after all the travel, but I don't think it's a must-try if you've got other priorities where food is concerned. There is a LOT of food to try in Japan!

We ended our night with a trip to Family Mart, grabbing drinks and a Mont Blanc parfait that was actually quite delicious. Why can't North American convenience stores be more like Japanese convenience stores?

Tomorrow will be our first entire day in Japan - traveling through Hamamatsu to Osaka! Hopefully the luggage forwarding works! 

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