Ellen Isaacs: Travel journal: Travel to Tokyo

Today was a travel day. We got out of the house ahead of schedule and drove with our dog Cassie to Eric & Tania's to drop her off with them. They were dog sitting two other little dogs just for today, which was a little overwhelming, but Cassie seemed to deal with it okay. After some sad goodbyes we continued to the airport. We dropped off our car near San Francisco Airport at Sky Park, which takes the car and parks it for you while you get right on the bus — very efficient. We got to the airport 2.5 hours early. We had checked in online, which turned out to be a good move because we avoided a long line and just walked up to a kiosk to check our bags. Much better. When someone arrived at the gate, I got on line to try to improve our seats. Ahead of me was a Japanese woman who showed me a piece of paper that said "I would like a (sic) aisle seat," asking if this was the correct phrase. I assured her it was, thinking that we would be in a very similar position in a matter of hours, mute and dependent on people to help us in our tasks. It turned out the flight was full, so we were stuck with the second and middle seat of a 5-seat section, oh well.

The flight left on time (1:30 pm), always a relief. The seats had individual screens and five movies were being played over and over on different channels. So we were able to keep ourselves occupied by watching three movies. Very nice. The flight arrived an hour early due to light head winds, around 3:30pm on Monday. So we'd lost almost a full day.

At the airport we had four items on our list: get our bags, get bus tickets to Tokyo, rent cell phones, and exchange money. All went smoothly. Our luggage was coming out onto the carousel when we got there. As we entered the terminal the bus counter was right there and they understood English well enough for us to get the right tickets. Just down the hall was an ATM and the cell phone rental place. Yen magically came out of the ATM machine after pressing some buttons, a bit of electronic networking that still amazes me. Then onto the cell phone place. The woman spoke English, and she explained our options for the cell phone plans and showed us how to use the phones. They weren't even that expensive, I think something like $5/day. All four of our tasks took less than a half hour.

We went outside to wait for the Airport Limousine Bus. There were several stations, all numbered, and our ticket indicated which stand to go to, so far so good. Then the staff looked at people's tickets and indicated where they should stand on the pavement. After a bus left, the people in a certain section moved their bags out to the curb, and then when the bus arrived the staff loaded their bags below while they got on the bus. All very efficient and well organized. Our bus arrived within a few minutes and soon we were on our way to Tokyo.

The airport is about an hour outside of Tokyo so at first it was fairly rural but soon it became suburban and then quickly urban. We saw a lot of European cars (Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar), which surprised me, although of course there were also Japanese brands. No American brands that I noticed.

The bus dropped us off at Hotel ANA, which is only about a five minute cab ride to our hotel in Roppongi. Getting that cab turned out to be a bit of a chore. There was a row of taxis lined up by the bus, so we started to walk toward one, but when the driver didn't get out or seem to acknowledge us with our bags, we turned back. Just then four other groups descended on the other taxis and got in, just like that. Then the taxi we had been going for drove off. Huh. Now what? More taxis came along but they just kept going. What's the deal here? Finally one stopped so we scurried over and got the driver to get out, and as I was about to show him where we wanted to go, my bag tipped over and the handle scratched and dented the side of the cab behind the wheel well. Oh no!! The driver looked at it and said in broken English something about an accident report and he got on his cell phone. As we waited, he told us to find another cab. I felt terrible about this, but what could we do? I hope there's a standard routine for this. We marched down to another cab that had come along and got in, showing him the map of our hotel. It took him some time to orient to the map and finally he decided he knew where it was. This was our first interaction with taxis and how hard it is to communicate where you're going. The city is made up of a bunch of big boulevards and lots of tiny side streets, often one car wide, and nothing is in a grid. I had read that before the 1970s, they numbered the buildings by the order in which they were built, not their order on the street, so it's a confusing mess. I think it's common for people to print out a map and give it to the drivers, and that's what our group did any time we used a taxi.

Oakwood Apartments
Tokyo, Japan
The driver did indeed find the hotel and dropped us off, at the Oakwood Apartments in the Roppongi district. Once there we were in good hands. The staff spoke English quite well (they seem to cater to international guests) and after checking us in they took us up to our room, a studio apartment, and showed us the amenities. This place is meant for people who are staying a month or more, so it has a little kitchenette, a washer/dryer machine (and even three packets of detergent!), and a DVD player with the TV. They provide some basic food, which is free — none of this overpriced mini-bar stuff. He explained that we should take our shoes off in the small entry area and they provided one-size-fits-all slippers to wear in the room. Given that my feet are especially small and Walendo's are especially big, the slippers fit neither of us. Maybe they work better for the range of feet sizes in Japan. So we just walked around in our socks. In any case, given what we'd heard about the tiny spaces in Tokyo, we were delighted with the size of the room and all the extras it came with.

Faucet with fresh
water over toilet tank
Some interesting things about our room: The toilet was in a separate part of the room from the bathroom. The toilet had a light and heavy flush, a very useful feature that we've seen before in Europe. You would think it would have made its way to the States by now, especially to places with water problems like California. There is also a spigot just above the tank through which water flows after you flush and then fills the tank. The idea is you run your hands under the water to wash them and then the water is reused to fill the tank. There was a little towel hanging next to the toilet to dry your hands. All very clever. The toilet also had buttons for various types of water sprays and air drying. We tried them out and they were strange at first but seem like a good idea.

Our room at
Oakwood Apartments
The bathroom has one room with the sink and another room with the shower/tub. The shower room is a little odd. There's a small floor area next to a deep bathtub/shower, but there's no shower curtain separating them, and the floor area has its own spigot down low, as if you'd use it to wash your feet or something. So you wind up getting the whole room wet when you shower, even if you tilt the shower head in toward the wall. Once you're done with a shower, you can set the whole room to a dry setting, which heats it up. So you put your used towels in there and dry them along with the room. We used them to dry clothes, too, since the dryer in the combined washer/dryer machine was very slow.

By now it was around 6pm and we were beat. We decided to go out for a few minutes to check out the main street, just so we'd have a sense of where we were. We asked where to find a grocery store and they sent us on our way. Every place we saw was a mini-mart, not a real grocery store, so we gave up and stopped in the am/pm (they have them here) and picked up a few essentials, plus a packaged sandwich for Walendo. It had three half sandwiches: ham & cheese, tuna salad, and egg salad. How about that! He said it was delicious — but then again, he has a low bar.

I couldn't stay up any longer, so we went to bed. I was hoping to wake up around 4am so I could check out the wholesale fish market, which happens between 5am and 8am, and is where all the fish for Tokyo is bought and sold for the day, about 600,000 pounds of it, or so I'd read.

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