Tokyo Trip 2 : The Flight & Day 1

 Tokyo trip 2

Sat 02.November - Sun.17.November.2019

Due to Covid-19, we won't be able to travel to Japan this year (2020). So instead, I'm going to take a trip down memory lane and go over my second trip to Tokyo we did last year (2019) with my  mom. For our second time in Japan we did stay for a few days longer and booked different hotels to get new experiences rather than book rooms at the same hotels we stayed at for our last time. We were a bit braver exploring the city this time and did travel around a lot more. And as by tradition, we got lost and confused multiple times.

I'll try not go into every small detail this time. When I wrote about my first trip to Tokyo, I became a bit overwhelmed. I get so scared of writing long text, I keep pushing it further and further into the future, and  the next thing you know a year has passed. So I'll try to keep my writings shorter this time around. 

Let's get started....

The FLIGHT Saturday, 02. November

Everything went a lot smoother this time, I'll tell you what. My brother was available to drive us to the airport, so we arrived at Helsinki-Vantaa in reasonable time and didn't have to wait 9 extra hours for boarding like we did last time due to our schedules not matching up.

The first improvement was that I didn't have a sick stomach this time around, and for a second, our seats. Last time, our seats were located on the left side of the plane close to the wing. This time, I deliberately chose seats at the last row in the back of the plane. Our seats were in the middle of the plane. My mom sat on my left side and on my right, an older Japanese man who was asleep most of the time. I didn't get as claustrophobic this time around, since my mom had the aisle seat and I could easily get up off my seat without having to wake up a stranger.

There were no delays and the plane took off right on time at 05.30 pm. The flight time was about 8 hours and 50 min. For dinner they served some pork beef curry rice, potato-lingonberry salad (eww), cold noodle salad and for desert a one measly chocolate biscuit.

Before falling asleep, I watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Detective Pikachu. Or I watched half of the Pikachu movie before starting to feel too drowsy and turning the movie off and finished watching it the next morning. I slept a lot better than last time, maybe because the engine noises weren't as loud at the back of the plane and because there wasn't as many needy people this time around calling the flight attendants over all the time.

DAY 1 Sunday, 03. November

For breakfast they served some spinach-omelette with meat ball and potato patties, blueberry-oat yogurt and a strawberry muffin. I'm no fan of spinach, but it was for the best to gobble it all down, because it was going to take hours before we got our next meal.

After the plane landed and we got through all the obligatory airport securities and got our bags, the next order of business was exchanging some money and then charging up our Pasmo IC cards. Aside from the money I was going to pay our hotel stays with, I again brought 1300€ as spending money. In retrospect, I did buy a lot more stuff this time around, so I spent all that money and even raised 200€ extra later. 

We charged our Pasmo card with 5000 yen each, but as we did travel a lot more with trains and subways this time around we later had to charge them again. After that I located the airport post office and picked up my rented Pocket Wifi's.

I couldn't resist buying at least one Gachapon at the airport, so I chose to spin a machine with a Moomin theme and got a cute miniature mug  with a picture of Hattifnatters on it.

Before leaving the airport, we picked up an updated Tokyo guide at the Info desk and the bought us some drinks from a vending machine. Mom got herself some coffee and I bought a bottle of some tea that had a cute Pokemon label on it. It tasted pretty bad, but I drank it anyway. I have yet to find a tea that I like, so I wonder when will I learn to stop buying them.

We took again the cheapest option to get into the city, which was the Shuttle bus that would take us to Tokyo Station for the ticket price of 1000 yen. We got on the bus early so we could pick our seats and sit next to each other. I wasn't that tired yet, so instead of getting some shut eye I watched the views pass by. I noticed we drove pass Disneyland, which I missed on our first trip. From Tokyo Station we switched to a train to Akihabara. 

I had set up my Pocket Wifi on the bus, so it should have been only a simple matter of following Google Maps' directions to our hotel. Except that it wasn't. From Akihabara we had to walk over to Asakusabashi. We may have taken the wrong exit again, but that wasn't the worst part. For whatever reason Google Maps had taken the liberty to mark our hotel on the map on its own and I, in my foolishness trusted Maps to know better than me. So like sheep, we followed the directions only to find a parking lot and no hotel in sight. 

Something about suffering from jetlag and getting lost really don't mix well together. So I tried again, this time typing down our hotel name directly in Google and through there, back to Maps, and sure enough, we were a couple of blocks off from the hotel. Thankfully, we didn't have to walk far before we found it. Unfortunately, though the check-in time wasn't until 3.00 pm and we were there too early. We were so tired at this point we walked into the lobby anyway and I asked if there was a chance that our room was available already. Maybe they took pity on us or something, but yes, thank our lucky stars, they did let us check in an hour earlier. I was lucky to have booked our stay at the hotel online on a day they had 50% off, but our stay of 13 nights still cost me 1200€. On the plus side, this hotel was less than ten minutes walking distance from Akihabara and a good supermarket.

Our room was really big compared to the hotel we stayed at in Kanda on our first trip. Now we had two beds and two windows facing different directions. The view was just full of rooftops, but from one of the windows we could just barely see the Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower! 

We rested for a while and then head out to find the Life supermarket, to buy us some dinner for the evening and breakfast for the next morning. We managed to navigate ourselves to the store's location, although we somehow managed to get there by some back entrance or something. We got what we needed food wise, and I couldn't resist buying some snacks and candies as well. And Noodles, lots and lots of noodles! I was a pleasant surprise that they also had one of my favorite Italian lemonades in their selection as well!

After getting back to the hotel and getting our stomachs full, we didn't stay up late. It was impossible. We were too tired, so we went to sleep really early, around 6.00 pm. All I can say  about the hotel bed is, that  I had one of my worst sleep on it. I would wake up every morning with a sore back, because the mattress was so hard. So for the rest of our stay I slept on top of my blanket, just to get that little bit of extra cushion between me and the mattress. Lucky that it was a double sized bed so the blanket was big enough to act as an emergency mattress and as a blanket at the same time.

I definitely have to give points to the hotel in Kanda for having the more comfortable bed. Our hotel in Asakusabashi was nearly perfect otherwise, but I would have to think it twice over if I was planning to book to stay there again anytime in the future. Getting a good night's sleep is too important.

to be continued....