tcreath

Hello everyone! I am sitting in our hotel in Tokyo right now, recovering from the long flight. We arrived around 3:30 this afternoon. Since I have a few minutes I thought I would go ahead and post my thoughts on today.

BACKGROUND INFO
Although I have traveled fairly extensively around the US and Europe, this is my first trip to Asia. I am 28, DH is 30, and we love experiencing new cultures, history, beautiful scenery and just strolling interesting area. We cashed in FF miles with AA and yesterday, after countless of hours of planning, we were finally on our way.

OUR ITINERARY
Our itinerary includes 2 nights in Tokyo, 4 nights in Kyoto and 1 night in Nagoya. We are flying out of Nagoya, since flights to Osaka weren't available.

And now, on to my trip report...

DAY 1
We had a very early flight out of Charlotte that included a 5 hour layover in ORD before flying JAL to Tokyo. Our flight was fairly non-eventful. I took an Ambien about two hours or so into the flight and managed to sleep for most of the flight.

We arrived in Tokyo on time and manaaged to find an ATM and the limousine bus, where we purchased tickets to the Tokyo City Airport Terminal. We booked our hotel, the Royal Park Hotel, because of the great reviews and because it was directly on the bus route. The ride to the TCAT was about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I found myself struggling to stay awake. The hotel itself is connected to the TCAT, making it very convenient when coming in from a long flight!

We love our hotel. We are usually fairly budget travelers, but decided to splurge a little in Tokyo. With advice from fellow travelers, we decided to stay in the upper-level executive rooms. We felt very important as we made our way to the 16th floor to check in. For those who may be interested, executive level rooms include various perks such as free use of the pool and exercise area, free breakfast each morning, free cocktails and sandwiches in the afternoon and concierge services. Our room is wonderful. Its a little on the small side but we have a magnificent view of Tokyo outside our rather large window. The bathroom has lots of great complimentary toilletries, and my husband got a kick out of the high-tech toilet. We found a great rate on travelocity.com that was quite a bit cheaper than the lowest rate their website was offering.

After freshening up a bit we made our way to, yes, McDonalds. I know I know....but we were beyong starving (the food on the plane was lackluster at best) and I was starting to feel ill because of it. McDonalds wass the first thing we found as its right in the TCAT building. I promise to try Japanese food tomorrow!

So after our dinner, we just walked and walked. We ended up in the Ginza district, and with the flashing lights, larger than life department stores and people bustling about this was just as I imagined Tokyo to be. We love it. I'm not really a large city person, which is why we are only staying two nights in Tokyo, but the city has a really cool vibe to it.

After a few hours of walking and gawking we decided to call it a night. We are both really tired from the long flight and are looking forward to crawling into our bed for the night. So with that being said....I will say good night.
Tomorrow we have a busy day scheduled!

Tracy

p.s. I apologize in advance for any spelling errors or missing words. I'm working with limited adrenaline here as the jetlag is fighting its way back!

Gpanda

Thanks for the beginning. Glad the hotel fits you. It's always much easier after the long flight when a hotel feels right. Penalty avoided.

einah235

great report, tcreath. I'm leaving in the morning for Tokyo and Osaka/Kyoto and look forward to reading your future reports and will post some info when I get back.

hawaiiantraveler

Great start! Hope you are enjoying yourselves and I can't wait for you to tell us all about it.

Aloha!

Dukey

We just came back so I know exactly what you are saying.

How's the weather this week?

bmttokyo

It's in the low 20's now. FALL is definitely here !!! I already cleaned the electric fans & will bring out our cold weather clothing this week. Lots of people now are wearing scarves & heavier jackets.

BIg difference from the weather I came home to returning from BKK early Sept.

tcreath

Thanks for the kind replies! I will post more soon.

Dukey, people here may think its chilly but it was so warm today that I actually got a tad bit sunburned! Today was absolutely gorgeous....hopefully it stays that way! Much warmer than I am used to this time of year.

Tracy

kent_and_debra

Hi tcreath,
My husband and I just booked a trip to Japan in Dec. for 15 days and then freaked out because we don't know anything about Japan so we will be loving every word of info about your trip.

I am now getting very excited.
Have fun.
Debra

tcreath

Debra,

My husband and I were in the same boat. We have traveled quite a bit around Europe but were curious about Asia. We cashed in miles when we found out that we can fly to Japan for less miles after October 1. We booked our trip with very little knowledge of Japan other than it looked interesting and was quite different from where we had been before. We were nervous about the language barrier and customs.

We are having a fabulous time. The people are nice and ultra polite. I was nervous about Tokyo, being that its such a large and crowded city, but its wonderful here. The vibe is exciting and it really is a feast for the eyes and senses. And for such a large city, its incredibly clean and well kept...or at least in the areas we were in. And although I'm sure it gets really crowded, we haven't experienced too much of that. Last night, Sunday night, we walked around the Shinjuku area and it was the most crowds we have experienced but it wasn't overwhelming. With all of the bright lights it was quite fascinating!

I'm sure you will have a fantastic time. So far we love it here and we have only seen Tokyo!

Tracy

tcreath

Day 2

Today we were both wide awake at 4:30 am, due to the jetlag I'm sure. I woke up mostly because I was starving. I have hypoglycemia, and I am used to eating at certain times. When I don't I get jittery, and since I am used to it being close to dinner time at home I was starving! I ate a protein bar I brought from home (yes, I came prepared for this!) and sat in the chair in our room looking at the twinkling lights of Tokyo and reading through my guidebook.

After a few hours we got ready and headed up to the top floor of the hotel for the free breakfast buffet for the executive floors. I will say that this breakfast buffet was terrific. There was so much to choose from! Wonderful French pastries (croissants, brioche, etc), breakfast meets, potatoes, sausages, cereal, salad, lots of fruit, an omelette station (that was quite entertaining to watch) and fresh-squeezed orange juice. You are treated to amazing views of Tokyo as you have your breakfast, and my tea cup was always full. Outside of perhaps the Hilton in Dubrovnik, Croatia, this was one of the best breakfast buffets I've seen on my travels. Delicious!

After we had (more than) our fill of the great food, we were on our way. Our first stop of the day was the Imperial Palace. We got there too early to get onto the grounds (which open at 9:00) so we walked around the outside of the moat, taking amazing picture after amazing picture....Tokyo is very photogenic! Once on the grounds we viewed the little museum and then just strolled around taking pictures. For such a large city, Tokyo has several large parks that provide a nice respite.

Afterwards we hopped on the metro and rode to the Omotesando area. Now I'll be honest; I wanted to come here mostly to visit the Oriental Bazaar. Hey, I was looking for some nice, inexpensive souvenirs to take home! Unfortunately I wasn't too impressed, as much of the merchandise was very kitschy. This was a neat area though, and I'm glad we walked around.

We were getting hungry at this point, and as we entered the Omotesando station we found a wonderful food-court of sorts filled with French food. Now, I know that I'm in Japan and should be eating Japanese cuisine, but I'm not one to pass up a French pastry. So we made our way to the Boulangerie Jean Francois, where I promptly pick up a croque monsier and a small pain au chocolat. These were delicious and riveled anything I had in Paris.

We strolled around Ginza, ducking into some of the stores and just trying to take it all in. I found shop called Ando that featured beautiful handmade Japanese gifts and found a beautiful small jewelry box for my mother-in-laws Christmas gift (she is a pain to shop for). When the sales associate found out I was giving it as a gift, she beautifully wrapped it for me. Then we found the small Belgium Waffle shop (Ginze Manneken) and shared a delightful chocolate-glazed belgium waffle.

My husband wanted to see some of the shrines in Uena Park, so we headed back to the metro station and rode up to Ueno station. The park is gorgeous; very large and lively. Today was a beautiful day; the highs were supposed to be 67 F but I beg to differ...I actually got a sunburn! There were street performs and music and it was just wonderful. We visited Kiyomizu Kannon Hall, Toshu-gu Shrine and the Benten temple. We found Shinobazu Pond filled with rowboats and couldn't resist! For a very low 6,000 yen we had half an hour on a pond in the middle of Tokyo with unbeatable views all around. And since my feet were starting to throb this was the perfect way to rest them.

By this time we were getting pretty tired so we made our way back to our hotel where I did something I learned never to do when jetlagged...take a nap. We set the alarm for an hour an a half and I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was to keep my eyes open when it went off. It was exhausting. But I dragged myself out of bed and prepared for an evening out.

First we headed back up to the 20th floor, where we took advantage of the free coctail hour and had a nice glass of wine (which Matt followed up with an Asahi beer) and some assorted cheeses before taking the subway to Shinjuku. This area was fascinating; an amazing array of flashing lights everywhere...I have never seen anything like it!

Now, for dinner. Before I start I will state that we are not foodies. We are both very picky, unfortunately, and not very adventurous. And to top it all off I don't eat any seafood. So we found a restaurant in the basement of a building called Lyon Beer Hall. The menu was in Japanese but there were pictures so I took a deep breath and analyzed each picture to try to figure out which plates did not have seafood in them. I decided on a plate that looked to be lo mein noodles without any meat on them. What I got was absolutely delicious. The noodles were in a wonderful sauce with small pieces of meat on it that looked similar to taco meet but had a wonderful flavor. I delighted in my heavely noodles and brown beer as my husband ate his...pizza. but in his defense the pizza was pretty good!

After walking around Shinjuku for awhile we decided to call it a night. What can I say? We are just not the clubbing type. I was still exhausted from my nap so it did not take long for me to fall asleep. Of course I was up this morning at 3:30 am!

Tomorrow (today)...Kyoto!

Thanks for reading!
Tracy

kent_and_debra

HiTracy,
This is so perfect as we will be flying into Tokyo so I feel like we are getting a first hand account of what we can expect, I will your posts with much excitement. Have fun.
Debra

Tim_and_Liz

I am loving your report, Tracy! I will be 28 and DH will be 31 when we make our first visit to Asia (including Tokyo) in March. It is wonderful experiencing Tokyo through your report.
Liz

tudorterrace222

Love the reports Tracy. We are flying to Japan in 4 days afor 2 weeks and your reports are definitely making me excited to get there!

Wade

tcreath

Day 3 - Kyoto

Today we were up bright and early, again, and wasted time by reading our guidebooks on Kyoto while waiting for the breakfast buffet to open. Once again the food was fabulous. Then we packed up our things and headed to the train station.

We couldn't figure out how to purchase tickets for Kyoto on the automated machine so we stood in line and purchased them at the ticket counter. The gentleman that we purchased the tickets from did not speak English and our ticket was in Japanese so we were a little confused. My husband thought our train left at 10:22 am (it was about 9:45 at the time) so he assumed we had plenty of time. While he left to look for an ATM, I decided to ask the information desk to be on the safe side. Good thing too, as the 10:22 was the date, not the time, and our train was leaving at 10:03, in approximately 8 minutes! We hurried up to the train and walked seemingly for miles down to the front of the train, where the cars for non-reserved seats are.

The ride itself was very pleasant; extremely fast and with some great views. We were lucky enough to get some pictures of Mt. Fuji between wisking into and out of tunnels. Japan is quite beautiful!

We got to Kyoto station and proceeded to the subway area. It took about 20 minutes to figure out the subway system and how to get tickets, but eventually we walked away with two tickets and a game plan of which subway exit to take.

We are staying at the ANA Hotel Kyoto. I was a little concerned because some of the comments on Trip Advisor were less then stellar, but we are very happy with our choice. The lobby is just beautiful, with a huge waterfall and Japanese garden viewed through floor-to-sealing windows in the lounge. The female employees wear traditional dress, the lobby itself has the slight scent of roses, and everyone is very friendly. Our room is nice and large, with another floor-to-sealing window, a couch and chair, comfortable bed and nice, large bathroom with tons of great free toiletries.

Unfortunately we got off at the wrong subway stop, due to our lack of planning this out better, which made it lots of fun to walk almost completely around the Nijo-jo Grounds with our heavy luggage. We finally found the hotel and were utterly exhausted so we quickly noted how beautiful the lobby was and then went up to our room, dropped our bags and fell into bed.

Jetlag finally crept up to us. We set our alarm for 2 hours but we couldn't get out of bed so that 2 hours turned into 3 before forcing ourselves up. We were just exhausted but dragged ourselves up, freshed up, and headed towards the downtown area for dinner.

After lots of walking we came across Daikichi, a small yakitori just outside of the downtown area. This place was wonderful; very small, filled with just a few locals, friendly staff that helped us out, and great food. We each had a bowl of rice topped with pieces of yakitori (chicked pieces cooked on a charcoal grill at the bar and covered in a sweet sauce) and extra sauce for some of the rice. Delicious! We topped off our dinner with a couple of draught beers and called it a night because we still weren't recovered from our earlier nap.

All in all I wish we would have made more of this day, but jetlag prevailed. I think it may have been a good thing, though, as yesterday we stayed asleep until a more normal 6:00 am and were able to stay awake, without a nap, for the entire day.

SOME NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

Since I am here I will go ahead and make some various notes and observations now so I won't forget to mention them later:

Language - I am used to traveling to Europe, where language was rarely an issue. Japan is another story. We haven't had any problems, and everyone has been very helpful and friendly, but we have come across very few people who speak English. I am in a foreign country so obviously this doesn't bother me and I was prepared, but I just wanted to make that known. We get by with hand gestures, pointing, attempted Japanese and lots of smiles.

Food - As I mentioned above, I am not an adventurous eater and am rather picky. Very annoying and sad, but its true. I have been very happy with my food choices so far, as I have managed to avoid seafood, but
I will say that I generally don't eat fatty meats at home, and always trim off the fat, so this has taken a little getting used to in Japan. The chicken pieces at the yakitori were pieces of thigh and was definitely on the fatty side. Luckily it was cooked fairly crispy on the grill; otherwise I don't know if I could have eaten it as easily. And yesterday I ordered soba noodles with beef and the beef was long, thin strips and mostly fatty.

ATMs - If you hold a foreign ATM, it may be hard to get money out. We had to use about 4 ATMs at Narita before we finally found one that took an international card. In Kyoto we never did find one on our first night so we did some research and found a Citibank in town that will accept foreign cards. We ended up having to walk completely out of our way to get to it, but we were starting to get desperate and didn't really have a choice. So if you have an ATM card, just know that many ATMs won't take your card. Don't let it worry you; just do a little research beforehand to find out where the international ATMs are. Also, we usually use a debit card at home, and found that it wouldn't go through for several of the places that accept credit cards so we had to pull out our credit card. Definitely come with a backup if you primarily use your debit card.

Overall we are having a wonderful time. We were a little nervous about trying our hand at Asia, but this has been an exciting and terrific adventure for us.

More to come!
Tracy

someotherguy

An ATM tip: the ones in Post Offices are completely reliable with foreign cards, and will flip into English when they recognize one. Post Offices ("yubinkyoku&quot can be recognized by a red T with a red bar on top. The ATMs are inside, usually standalone devices (not in a wall) that look a bit like a copier. My bank (B of A) charges me $5 plus 1%, so I always withdraw the maximum allowed (typically 35,000 yen).

laurieco

Tracy, I'm really enjoying your trip report. Glad you are having such a good time. Japan is a wonderful country.

As for the food, the first time DH and I were there, we went to a yakatori place in the Ginza and just ordered the special. One of the skewers looked like chicken feet or something, not anything I would EVER eat at home. After a few sakes however, I was ready to eat anything! So, if you get served something that looks suspect, just have another beer.

someotherguy

While I'm here, let me add that the top floor of pretty much any department store will be full of restaurants and many will have models in the window. The basement will be a food hall.

rainsnowrain

someotherguy is right. You can use your US-issued ATM and debit cards at the post office ATMs. It works every time for me without fail.

I think it's perfectly okay to be in Japan and stick with familiar food. Places like KFC and McDonalds taste "different" in Japan so it's a "new" experience in a way. There are countless of things you could try even if you don't eat fish or fatty meat but it's hard to hit the right places without a guide or careful research. If you aren't a foodie and if it's not your priority then that's just that. There is nothing like a bowl of hand-made soba prepared to perfection but it took me years and a lot of $$$ to find it.

I'm enjoying reading your report and actually, I really want to eat all the food you've described!

Enjoy Kyoto and don't forget to try the famous ice cream in Arashiyama (4 flavors in a cone...it's on your way from the station to the bamboo path & there is always a long line in front of it so you can't miss it!).

hawaiiantraveler

As others have said check out the Post office for reliable ATM's which take foreign cards. We have even gotten money in an obscure mountain village post office which was no bigger than 20m in total.

Another place you can try the atms are at 7 elevens. They are all over Japan. Had lots of luck there with their money machines.

Aloha!

Kathie

I'm enjoying your report! Keep it coming.