My hotel shuttle dropped me off at the KAL bus stop to catch the bus to the airport. I forgot to ask the Tourist Information Center last night where the cheaper generic airport bus stop was in Myeongdong so I had to cough up W14,000 for this ride (W5,000 more). At the airport, it was another Dunkin' Donuts breakfast to finish off the last of my wons. I actually had to use my credit card because their darn egg, cheese, bacon biscuit was almost $4...without a drink!
I got to Narita with no problems and as instructed by former co-worker Kei, whom I'll be visiting in Tokyo, I took the airport limousine bus to The New Sanno Hotel in Minato-ku. $30 for a bus ride! And to think I was whining about the $14 KAL bus ride in Seoul! Tsk. After two hours, I got to The New Sanno Hotel which was supposedly "very near" Kei's work. However, I wasn't familiar at all with the area so I wasn't about to drag my luggage around the city, trying to figure this out. Luckily, the guard was quite nice and called Kei for me who wasn't expecting me today. She thought I was arriving tomorrow! And this was after I've given her my complete flight itinerary and everything a whole month ago! After a $7 taxi ride to her work, I found Kei who was still in shock that I'm in Tokyo. In return, I was in shock about her. LoL.
We rode a taxi to her grandma's condo where I'll be staying at for four nights before I head off to Kansai. Maybe it's because I'm in a posh neighborhood, but I didn't think the condos/apartments in Tokyo were small as I've heard about over and over before. Hmm, it's all relative, I guess.
Since Kei didn't know that I was arriving today, she didn't have her stuff at her grandma's place, so we headed over to her mom's place via the subway and this was the start of my "Oh my God, I can't live in Tokyo" mentality.
Tokyo's subway is very much like Seoul's except that there aren't any manned ticket booths. Instead, you have to look at the subway map and find your intended stop where it'll say how much your ticket is. Using the ticket machine, you insert the coins, press the price for your ticket and voila, you now have your subway ticket. This is actually a longer process than having a manned ticket booth. In Seoul, I just tell the ajussis my subway stop, and they would give me the ticket which had the price already stamped on it. Easy peasy, fo' sheezy.
As we walked down to the platform, Kei was telling me how dirty Tokyo is and that's why I should wear a mask every day and gargle some antiseptic every night. I kept laughing because coming from Seoul where people talk highly about their city/country, Kei sounded so anti-Tokyo for someone Japanese. I was like, "Are you an American trapped in a Japanese body?!" LoL. Tokyo's subway seats were covered in fabric, hence looked dirtier compared to Seoul's. I found that Tokyo-ites were more casually dressed than Seoul-ites: I actually found lots of fellow jean-wearers and not all suit-wearers were wearing ties. This finally silenced my self-image problems that surfaced while in Seoul. HeHe. Regardless, Tokyo subways are chaotic: people running up and down the stairs, people pushing themselves in an already-packed train, and well, drunk people on the subways. Bleh.
I told Kei that I wanted Yoshinoya for dinner, but she couldn't remember where a Yoshinoya was (Seriously?! First level by Red Ribbon at SM Megamall, Kei. HaHa!). When we got out of the station, we saw a Matsuya so we opted for Yoshinoya's competitor instead. Wow, a vending machine to order your dinner. Thankfully, Kei was with me, because the whole thing was in Japanese and the pictures were so tiny that they weren't helpful at all. Kei didn't know that water came with the meal so I ended up paying for bottled water. Pooh!
Afterwards, we made it to their own apartment and again, hello, this place isn't small! After checking e-mail and Kei gathering her stuff, we made it back to her grandma's condo where I went straight to my Japanese bed for the night (umm, after I gargled the antiseptic. LoL). It was uneventful, but very long day for this traveler.
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