Japan Trip 1: Arriving in Tokyo, Japan

Would you believe me if I said I've never really looked at my Japan Trips photos since I got back? Once we got back it was studying studying straight away, for yearlies and trial and then the school certificate.


But, now that I have some free time now, I'll be sorting through the 2065 pictures I've taken in Japan and putting some of them up here for you guys to see, along with a recount of the trip. It's going to be way too long if I put them all into one post, so I'll split them up into parts and be very selective in which photos I put up. It takes forever to get pictures on to the blog, and 2065 photos is a lot to get through, even if I'm just looking through them, so please be patient with me, I'll try my best to finish this project someday.


Here goes:



Airport

 




Waiting to board the plane



  You should all know what the airport looks like, but these are taken when we're waiting to board the plane. The blond girl sitting in the row closest to the camera, second from the left? That's Mrs Vercoe's daughter. She had her 13th birthday on the trip I think, but she looks older. She looks older than me! (okay, so that's not very hard to do)


I arrived at the airport really early, around 4:30 am. When everyone was here we got our boarding pass, and then went shopping. Window shopping mostly, don't think anyone actually bought anything then.


Boarded the plane, and there's the usual flying experience: cramped seats, dry mouth, dry nose, dry everything, hurting ears when plane's taking off and landing etc etc. But, Japanese Airline in-flight entertainment system is wonderful. There's the usual movies and shows (they had Avatar the Last Airbender, Karate Kid and about 20 more movies) and then there's lots and lots of songs in English, Japanese and Chinese (there were 20-30 playlists, each with around 15 or so songs).


And get this, they had games. Tetris, Bejewelled, Sudoku, Mario, Alien Invasion, Disney games, all the classic games are there, maybe more than 30 of them. And you could play some of them in 2 player mode with someone else in the plane. 2 player tetris on the plane anyone?


The curry rice I got was alright, but the other choice, the steak, looked disgusting. It was minced meat struck back together in a paddy sort of thing. Yuck. There were beans, bamboo shoots and bean sprouts, and sour ginger for side dishes. (I didn't like them much, I think it's a Japanese thing)


Arrived at the Narita International Airport in Tokyo, Japan at night. Most people, including me, got one of those souvenir coins. We got to our first hotel, and it looked good, with all polished wood and bronze and leather in the lobby.,


Cool/old looking clock




Cute Disney figurines




More pretty stuff




We ate here, the food was western style

 There was some mix up somewhere between the school, the travel agency and the hotel. So we could stay in the room arrangements we had, and I ended up with Cindy and a year 8 girl called Elizabeth (she's not from our school, but her brother is Douglass, our prefect)


Because it was really late, the teachers just took us to a convenience shop called Familymart (they're everywhere in Japan) to buy a quick bite to eat before going to bed. They sold lots of almost instant food. There were pre-packaged sushi, onigiri, pasta, noodles, ice cream, tea. And the shop assistant microwaves the food for you if you need it (like pasta and noodles), so it was really nice. It was really late, so some of the food were on sale, and we got pretty good deals.


I had some onigiri (triangular, rice wrapped around some filling), a pudding, and a bottle of warm green tea. You know how we in Australia have fridges to keep the drink cold? In Japan, there's one box/fridge that keeps drinks hot in the top half and keeps drinks cold in the bottom half. The warm green tea has become my favourite drink of all time, I just had to buy some whenever I saw it (and you see them everywhere in Japan).