Tokyo trip
Sun. 18.November - Thurs.29.November.2018
Me and my mom had been planning a trip to Tokyo for almost a year in advance. And it all started because I watched some other peoples travel vlogs on YouTube. We made a deal that my mom would pay the flight tickets and I would pay our hotel stays.
First of all, getting to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport turned out to be slightly more problematic than we anticipated. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 04.35 pm. Neither my dad or brother was available to drive us directly to the airport, so we had to rely on public transportation to get there. However, none of the afternoon bus routes went directly to the airport or within a timetable we were comfortable with, so that we could be sure we arrived on time to get through security check, baggage drop and so forth in case of delays and such. So we didn't have many options, either we take one of the afternoon buses and risk being late or we get there super early. We chose to go early, so my dad drove us to the next town over, where was this one bus, the first of the day that drove directly to the airport. The bus would arrive at the airport around 07.00 am. Which meant we had closer to nine hours to spend at the airport just waiting.
Let's start at the beginning....
The FLIGHT Sunday, 18. November
With everything packed and ready. I had set my alarm to go off at 04.00 am, but I woke up on my own at 03.30 am, because I was too nervous/excited about the upcoming day.
Dad drove us into town where the bus left at 05.40 am and the bus ride was a little over an hour long. The first thing we did at the airport after taking a restroom break, was going into one of the restaurants where they served a breakfast buffet.
After breakfast we went to the baggage drop station, self check-in and then went through the security check. There weren't that many people in line so it was over pretty fast. With all that mandatory taken care of at the earliest convenience, we were now to explore the airport. The time was 09 o clock at this point. We sat down at a cafe (without ordering anything) where there was this great view over the airfield and we could watch the airplanes land and take off. We just sat there for hours watching the planes come and go. Maybe it was around eleven o clock when we got up and left and walked around the store area for a while. We only went in one of the shops that sold general souvenir stuff, candies and such. There was also a small Moomin shop we also had a look at. But we didn't buy anything at either shop, I was firmly going to hold on to my money until we got to Japan.
So the clock was around twelve when we came to the waiting area at our gate. Still four hours to wait. There was a small kiosk close by for people who need their coffee fix and some vending machines for cold drinks and snacks spread around the area. And some restrooms close by, one special thing about the bathrooms in the airport were that they played bird's singing/chirping on speakers in there. It was kinda weird at first, but you get used to it.
The view from the windows was really boring as there was just another building directly in front. There's nothing as fun as staring at a grey wall for four hours! One fun thing about the waiting area was that there were a few rocking chairs! Not many, but a few, so I sat down in one. The fun of a rocking chair wears off surprisingly quickly, so for the rest of the time I lay down on a wooden bench. Absolutely nothing was cushioned in any way so it did get very uncomfortable for as long as we had to be waiting there out of our circumstances.
I spent the time with filling in my travel journal and chatting with my friend on WhatsApp about Red Dead Redemption 2, which I still hadn't had the chance to play. We pretty much chatted right up till the last minute before we boarded the plane. Or rather, boarded the bus that would take us to the plane, which was far away on the other side of the airfield. Maybe there were 4 bus loads of people in total, because the plain was full and no free seats in sight, at least in economy class were we were seated. I had a window seat, but there wasn't that much to look at for half the flight because it was so dark outside.
When we boarded, we were offered a complimentary bottle of spring water, which was nice. On every seat was a blanket, a small pillow and some (cheap) earbuds provided. This was the first time me flying with a plane that had an entertainment system on the seat in front of me. I guess they don't have those on short distance flight. The longest flight I've been on before this were something around three hours, give or take. The scheduled flight time for this plane to Narita was 9 hours and 45 min. The pilot gave an announcement that there might be some delay, because of heavy turbulence reported in by other planes. So they had to deviate from the regular flight path in order to avoid it, so that the flight would be as smooth as possible for us passengers. I think there was only a ten minute delay, which isn't that bad. Unless you have a connecting flight to catch, of course.....but we didn't, so we were OK. Oh right, our planes take off was actually delayed because we had to wait for passengers from a connecting flight. So in total our plane was about 20 minutes behind schedule when we arrive at Narita airport.
About the flight.... I'm not gonna lie, I had a bad time. The experience as a whole was very uncomfortable for multiple reasons. One of the reasons was the fact that I had a window seat. Which made it a chore trying to get to the bathroom, because you have to ask two people to move out of the way in order for that to happen. Also, the Japanese lady in the aisle seat was asleep most of the time, which only added to the hardship. After about 7-8 hours the window seat also starts to feel very claustrophobic, because you are surrounded and have little room to stretch yourself. The air starts to get a little stale and suddenly you start to feel too warm and you know there is very little you can do about it. And the other, biggest reason to why the flight was such a hell, was that I had an upset stomach for that day. Upset stomach + limited access to a bathroom = bad time. I'll just leave it at that. A third reason for my misery was that I couldn't sleep. I'm that type of person, who needs almost complete silence and all lights out in order to fall asleep. The lights? Well, they do dim the indoor lights, when the plane goes into "night time mode", but guess what doesn't get dimmed or turned off? Those entertainment systems on the back of every seat. Unless the person sitting there turned the screen off, which most didn't do, there was this awful bluish light shining everywhere when otherwise it would have been suitably dark. That's fine, I have one of those sleeping masks you can put over your eyes. I can deal with those screen lights. Another thing is the noises. Our seats were very close to the wing of the plane, if that made any difference. The plane makes this constant, loud humming. It's very annoying and distracting, but that is something you have to get used to. So, the engine humming is bad, but necessary if you want to arrive at your destination in one piece.
Now the most aggravating thing was.... the service call buttons. Come on, there has to be a way to make those things work silently! I distinctly remember three times I ALMOST fell asleep only to be woken up by a loud "DING!" because someone close by called a flight attendant over. I was really tired and miserable at that point and I just wished the flight would be over. I literally was ready to cry. I have never felt so trapped and tired! That's enough complaining. Let's forget how uncomfortable I was during the flight for now.
This was the first time I got to use one of those entertainment systems. You could choose between listening to a wide variety of music, watching movies/TV-shows or switch between multiple camera/map modes of the plane. It was fun watching the cameras during landing/take off, and checking from time to time on the map where we were exactly. They did have bigger screens mounted on the walls that showed the camera/map, but it was nice to have control over what you wanted to watch.
I only briefly tried to put on some music. First, I put on a playlist of some Finnish music, but then I noticed they had Japanese music there too, and tried to switch over to that. I didn't work, maybe the system glitched, or I was too stupid to figure out how it worked. It wouldn't switch over to J-pop no matter how many times I pressed the damn thing. I also couldn't fast forward the Finnish playlist to the end, so I just gave up and switched over to watching movies instead.
Before they started serving dinner around 06.30 pm, the flight attendants handed out some customs papers for everybody to fill in. You get two small papers to fill in and then you need to keep track of them until you've cleared customs, so don't lose them! Where are you staying, when are going to leave, are you bringing forbidden items and etc. sort of questions were asked. I had my papers filled in, by the time they were handing out dinners, we ate, and then I helped my mom fill in her papers. As for dinner, you got to choose between chicken & rice or mashed potatoes & meatballs. We both picked the chicken dinner. In addition to the chicken and rice you were also served a bread bun with butter and a mushroom,noodle, bean, pea, avocado salad and as desert a cup of buckthorn berry pudding. It was all really good, I can't complain except that the portions are so small, I could easily have eaten another if my guts hadn't been against me.
After a good dinner, we filled my moms custom papers and tucked them away in our bags for safekeeping. Now it was movie time! From the many movies to choose from I picked the shark movie, "The MEG" which had recently come out. Most of the movies didn't have Finnish subtitles, so I put on the English ones instead. It just helps a lot to read what the characters are saying in case if I can't make it out over the sound effects. Once the movie was over, I was trying to get some sleep, but to no avail like I said before. After giving up on that, I watched another movie instead, which was Deadpool 1. I was dead tired at this point and couldn't keep track of time, but either way, the plane landed at Narita airport around nine in the morning local time (02 am in Finnish time).
Fortunately, this time the plane did park right next to the airport so we didn't need to take a bus when we got off. But damn, was there a lot of walking ahead of us. It felt like we walked a few kilometers before we even reached the baggage claim spot. All with the obligatory security/customs was over pretty fast, we didn't even really have to wait in line, because it was that efficient. Every time I've been to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, I have always had to wait for my bag to arrive, but in Narita my bag was already there waiting for me!
Now with the flight part officially over, let's switch over to our day one in Tokyo. Remember, we left Finland on Sunday and arrived in Japan on Monday.
DAY 1 Monday, 19. November
First thing after getting our stuff and moving to a more general area of the airport, I left my mom looking over our bags while I went searching for a post office and I found one pretty quickly just looking at the floor map. I think it was on the second or third floor and there was again quite a bit of a walk. Few weeks prior to our trip I rented two of those convenient Pocket WiFi machines and I needed to pick them up at the post office (and once our trip was over I would just return them to this same post office in the provided envelope). I signed some papers and got my package and returned to my mom without opening it.
When I got back to the first floor, the next thing on our list was getting some money exchanged. We did have 25,000 yen in cash already (exchanged in Finland) which was enough to get us from the airport to Tokyo. We decided it would be far more convenient to have all our money exchanged here at the airport instead of having to look for an exchange spot once we arrived in Tokyo. My mom had her money changed first because I had some calculations to do. First, I considered to exchange all my money separately, but then I thought I would be too much of a hassle to have to fill in the forms three times
In one envelope was 200€ I had saved to be our "food money". In retrospect, it wasn't quite enough, so something around 250-300€ would have been better.
In another envelope was 900€ which was to pay for our hotel. There was a little extra money in this pile though, because I was unsure if the price I got from the booking page included tax or not. Originally, we were going to stay for 10 nights at the same hotel, but then as a last minute decision we decided to switch to an airport hotel for the last night, which was paid in advance. The actual amount I paid for our 9 night stay at our main hotel was something below 800€.
And the third envelope contained 1300€ which was my spending money. (Don't judge, I worked at two jobs for this and I didn't even spend it all. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't end up in a situation where I would regret not buying something due to not having enough money)
So in total, I exchanged 2400 euros and in return I got almost 300,000 yen.
Next thing in order, was to get a re-loadable IC card, Pasmo or Suica, for easier time traveling around Tokyo by train/subway/bus. I knew you could buy these cards from an ATM or "vending machine" (whichever word is correct), but the problem was finding one of them. There were none to find on the main level so we tried the basement level where the train station is located. Me and my mom were both very tired, but my mom was starting to get really irritated by this point because we couldn't find one of those damn things. I even asked the information desk at the station, but they just pointed me to a general direction where others ATM where (not very helpful). Eventually, we did find a machine that had the word PASMO written on a sign above it. My mom had in advance told me she wanted to get a Suica card, but since we couldn't find one and we were too tired to care at this point, we got the Pasmo cards for us. The card itself costs 500 yen and I think the minimum amount of money you have to load on the card is also 500. I knew we would be traveling a lot by train around the city so I fed the machine 5000 yen, which put my card balance at 4500 yen. We repeated this for my moms card and finally we had finished our business at the airport! We could leave!
The one last thing at the airport, I did was ask the receptionist at the main floor information desk where I could find the Tokyo Shuttle bus ticket counter. She was very helpful and showed me on a map where I needed to go. Luckily, the ticket counter was close by so we didn't have to walk very far. The Tokyo Shuttle bus is one of the cheapest ways to get to Tokyo Station so, that's why picked it. It's also by far the easiest and straightforward. We weren't ready yet trying to figure out how the trains of Japan work. One ticket to Tokyo Station by bus cost only 1000 yen. After I got our tickets, there was a little time before the next bus would leave, so mom wanted to try out one of those vending machines while we waited. I guess she didn't really know what she was buying, in her own words she just pushed the button that had the nicest picture, and out popped a small bottle of grape juice.
As we exited the main doors of the airport and looked for the right platform for our bus, mom spotted another vending machine (they are everywhere) and this one had coffee in it! We were surprised you can actually get hot drinks from those vending machines as well. Getting some coffee in her system cheered my mom up and she gave me the grape juice to drink, but I saved it for later. Now it was time to get on the bus. I don't remember exactly how long the bus ride took, an little over an hour maybe? The bus was packed full and we didn't get to sit next to each other, but at least the Japanese know how to travel quietly. Which is why I thought it was very strange that the driver talked over on the PA system about something for the whole duration of the trip. Naturally, it was all in Japanese so I couldn't understand any of it. Finnish bus driver talk too, but only very briefly. They introduce themselves, the destination and stops of the bus, estimated time of arrival and if the bus is on schedule/delays and that's it. Usually it's over in ten minutes. What the heck did the Japanese bus driver talk about for over an hour? Considering this Shuttle bus has no other stops except Tokyo and Ginza Stations.
After all the hassle at the airport, it was nice to again just sit down and relax on the bus. I did rest my eyes for a good portion of the drive without falling asleep. There wasn't much exciting views to look at on the highway anyway, so I don't think I missed out on much.
The bus pulled to the left side of the road once we reached the Tokyo Station stop. That was really the only time I actually paid attention to the fact that Japan has left side traffic, I'm so used to that bus stops are on the right side of the road. Again, it was very efficient, our bags got out of the bus before we did. The bus continued on its way and all the people off the bus scattered, and we were left there wondering where the station is. I really wish they could put up a sign somewhere where it would say "TOKYO STATION THIS WAY-->". We were contemplating which way we should go, because we had absolutely no idea where we were other than somewhere in the vicinity of the station. We looked at the other side of the road and saw something that looked like a shopping mall and talked about maybe heading there for starters to get off the street. The only clue we had was that we were standing in front of a building that says "Daimaru". Pretty much every travel guide will tell you that big shopping centers have free WiFi, so that's what I did, I turned on the WiFi on my phone and even though we were still out on the street it found a connection. (However, as I turned on the Wifi I also immediately got a security alert from Google that someone was trying to access my account. Not even once after that did I try to connect to any free WiFi.) All I wanted was a quick view of google maps to tell me how far this Daimaru was from Tokyo Station. Well, as it turned out they are practically next to each other if not part of the same complex. We were heading in the right direction! How lucky that we didn't start wandering the streets and gotten lost.
Yes, I had checked beforehand what building we should look for in order to avoid getting lost, but..... Here's the problem. If you google "Tokyo Station" you are greeted with pictures of this very distinguish looking building. (pictures from google)
And where the bus left us there was no such building in sight and nowhere were there any signs for directions which way the station is located. This was our view:
Once we were inside the building, we were still kinda half-lost because we couldn't figure out where exactly we were and where we needed to go to find the trains. There were floor maps on the walls occasionally, but those weren't very helpful because they were only in Japanese and they were missing that very important red dot that tells you "YOU ARE HERE" on the map. Those maps don't do squat when you don't know WHERE YOU ARE. Trying to navigate Tokyo Station was easily the worst part of the trip. That place is HUGE and it is very easy to get lost. So we did wander around aimlessly for a little while, until we found an area where there were signs hanging from the ceiling that guide you to the each train platform. Hallelujah! I was getting really frustrated and tired of being lost, so finally some progress!
All we had to do now, was to find the Yamanote line, (the train that just goes around in a big circle around Tokyo) in order to get to the part of town where our hotel was. It was surprisingly easy! Everything regarding trains was very well-marked. Not once during the whole trip did we get lost due to not finding the right train or platform. It was a very short train ride as we got off at the first stop after Tokyo Station. Kanda station is only a fraction of the size of the central station. Now all we had to do was to find our hotel.... which was easier said than done. Yes indeed, we got lost..... AGAIN.
All because we took the wrong exit. The key thing to know when you try to navigate any station in Tokyo is which exit/entrance you are using. I don't know why, but my sense of direction was turned all upside-down, what I thought was south was north and my east was actually west. So we took the west exit when we were supposed to go east. I was so tired my brain wasn't probably working as it should. Much like my mom at the airport was ready to have a meltdown, I was so done for one too at this point.
Yes, I had looked before hand where the hotel was, and on the map it seemed simple enough. I chose this hotel precisely because it was so close to the station. We spent the next half hour lost walking up and down the streets. And then, finally, Mom spotted a building with the Hotels name on the roof in the distance. Our hotel was part of a hotel chain, we knew had more than a few hotels in the area, we thought even if it wasn't our hotel, they'd at least could give us directions. We found the very tall and narrow building and praise be! It was our hotel! Our ordeal was almost over! We arrived there half an hour too early, though. The check-in time was at 15.00 pm, so we had to sit down and wait in the lobby. After twenty minutes of waiting the staff was nice enough to let us check-in a little earlier.
As I said before, we were originally going to stay 10 nights at this hotel, but for convenience sake decided to stay our last night at an airport hotel. I was unable to change my reservation on the booking site I used, so as I was checking-in I also asked if it was okay if we checked out one day earlier. It all worked out okay. Then I payed for our stay with cash. I wouldn't say our communication with the hotel staff was very fluent in English, but we still understood each other. I haven't checked-in at hotels that many times in my life, so I'm not even sure if it's standard procedure, but the staff asked me to type in our last name in the form. I can imagine that our last name must be challenging to pronounce in Japanese, when most Finnish people can't even get it right.
Finally, we were in! We got our key cards and went to the elevator, our room was on the top floor, which was the 13th! Truthfully, the room was very small. There was a big double bed, a small fridge, a narrow table attached to the wall, one chair and bathroom with a small bathtub. I knew the room was going to be very compact and I was fine with that, the only thing I would complain about was the very feeble bathroom door. The door was basically just a frosted plastic window, not very private exactly... and the space was so tiny your knees would almost touch the wall, while sitting on the toilet.
view in the evening
Also, there was a big window with a view of rooftops overlooking the train tracks. In the distance, I could see the buildings in Akihabara. There was really no other choice than to store our luggage under the bed, otherwise we would constantly have to hop over them in order to move around.
After unpacking some everyday stuff and putting our bags away, it was finally time to sit down and relax for a while. There was a big flat screen TV on the wall across from the bed. I was excited to watch some Japanese television. I was disappointed! There were twelve free channels on the TV, and on every channel was the same thing! News about the "financial misconduct" by the Chairman of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, being exposed. Every damn channel, every day. At the end of our stay the news value had died down a little bit, but still they would show his picture and talk about him briefly at least once a day. One channel was BBC News where there would occasionally show news spoken in English and subtitled in Japanese, but most of the time the news were also dubbed. It was nice to hear English once in a while after long days of hearing nothing but Japanese.
view in the morning
We rested for a few hours and then decided to head out to buy some food for the evening. We explored the close vicinity of the hotel for the vending machines and then went to the 7/11 across the street from the hotel. There were lots of konbinis nearby, Lawson and Family Marts, but that Seven-eleven happened to be the one closest. The convenience stores are all roughly the same size and have very similar selection of items, which is very small, when you compared it to an actual food store. Anyway, we got what we needed from there.
What I learned about shopping in Japanese stores, you have to try to stay aware if the prices include tax or not. Some stores have price tags only without the tax, some have both the tax free and the tax included price displayed and some had straight out the tax included price, nothing else. Going to cashier is like an adventure every time, you never know how much you're going to pay! Seriously, it was so varied from store to store you have to stay alert. I was asked twice during the whole trip, if I wanted it tax free or not, and they both happened to be big name chain stores. I swear, this one time in a smaller store I got everything tax free without them or me asking for it, which was very strange.
Anyway, we headed back to the hotel with our evening meals. We bought some onigiris with different fillings and some salad mix and for drink, I still had my grape juice from the airport I placed in the fridge earlier. The onigiris and salads were really good for a quick and easy meal, the grape juice on the other hand I was not a fan. The onigiri with fried chicken filling was my favorite, but it was harder to find, or maybe it was always the first to be sold out? You could find all kinds of different tuna fillings everywhere (they are fine too) but not that many with chicken .
With our bellies full, we planned what we were going to do tomorrow and then went to sleep early, around 08.00 in the evening. I might be counting this wrong, because of the time difference between Finland and Japan (Japan is seven hours ahead), but according to my calculations, I was awake for 35 hours straight. What is it, a day and a half without sleep?
The first day was the hardest, but we got through with it. Now, after everything, all the stress and anguish of getting lost so many times could have easily been avoided. Remember that I picked up those pocket WiFi devices at the airport? Well, I didn't open the package until we were in our room at the hotel, because I didn't believe it wouldn't be that easy, that I would just turn the device on and have WiFi. Turns out, it was that easy. So now I was regretting real hard that I didn't use it sooner and prevent us from getting lost in those few times. Then again, if we hadn't gotten lost, we would have arrived at the hotel even earlier and would have to wait even longer..... Well, now I know for future reference how to badly navigate Tokyo Station so that won't be a problem again and if there will be a next time I know I can immediately start using those pocket devices. The more you know....
to be continued...
