Two Tickets to Tokyo

Thursday, February 13 and Friday, February 14

Sometimes, as I travel, I think about the phrases I might use to write about my experience or how I might arrange them narratively to recount them later on. Boarding the plane from San Francisco to Tokyo, I had visions of starting my travel journal with some descriptive imagery of the view of Tokyo on our plane's descent, waxing poetic about how excited Thomas and I are to explore the sprawling city below. In reality, we were sandwiched in the middle of the plane and didn't catch a glimpse of the outside world for any of the 11-hour flight.

Japan's infrastructure impressed us from the moment we landed. While the terminal has all of the usual suspects—booths for rental vehicles and aggressive taxi drivers—it is built on top of an expansive subway station with all of the amenities that a tourist could ask for, and some that no one would ever think to ask for (would you like to pay extra to ride on the limited edition train emblazoned with Hello Kitty?). We made quick work of buying train tickets into Tokyo, exchanging some extra cash for yen, and getting IC cards (transportation cards that can be used to pay for almost all types of trains and in some convenience stores) loaded for the 6 weeks of exploration ahead.

As most international trips begin, this evening was a bit of a blur between the lack of sleep on the flight, the restless night of sleep before we departed, and the sheer overwhelm of traversing a new country for the first time. The most we could muster was navigating the train system and making the walk to our hotel (a walk that I would have told you took at least an hour, until we retraced our steps to get back to the train station at some point in the following days and found it was maybe four blocks away, at most).

It did seem sacrilegious to stay in completely, so we followed the time-honored tradition practiced by all foreigners and went to a conbini (convenience store) to cobble together our first meal. Let not the visions of greasy rows of rotating taquitos and and sticky, abused slurpee machines bias you against the wonder that is the Japanese convenience store. These bare little resemblance to American 711s, with orderly aisles of beverages (both alcoholic and not), snacks, and prepared meals. Onigiri (rice balls stuffed with anything from tuna and mayo to pickled plum) wait in neat rows, wrapped in ingenious packaging that separates the delicate nori from the moist rice to keep it crispy until consumption. Bowls of noodle dishes, pastas, and stir fried veggies, composed and presented as you might find in any respectable restaurant, beg to be taken home and microwaved. And, of course, the 711 egg salad sando, which Anthony Bourdain called "unnaturally, inexplicably delicious," tempts all first-time visitors.

Egg sandos, shrimp chips, and beverages in hand (a canned whiskey highball for Thomas and a bottle of green tea for me), we walked back to our hotel and settled in to watch some unintelligible Japanese T.V., bleary and delirious. We sunk into bed, relieved to have our most intensive day of travel behind us and intoxicated by the excitement of our adventures to come.