Robinson World Tour Part 2: Two Days In Tokyo

Two Days in Tokyo

Tokyo was not originally on the agenda for our travels. Our travels from Asia to South America required us to fly from Bali, Indonesia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Tokyo, Japan to Dallas, US to Lima, Peru. This would have meant almost 48 hours of straight travel, so we decided to stop in Tokyo for two days. We are both glad we stopped.

The city is big, extremely clean and orderly. What a switch from the areas we had just traveled. Our hotel was next to the train station and made it easy for us to take the train from the airport. Since we arrived early in the morning and our hotel room wasn’t ready we hit the ground running. The first stop was the Imperial Palace. The palace had burnt down years ago but the grounds were quite beautiful with the old walls, moat, gardens and some of the older buildings.

After the palace we checked in and had a quick nap. Then we were off to the oldest temple and gate in the city (Kaminarimon Gate and Temple). It was very crowded with school tour groups and others. We tried to take the water taxi back to the hotel but it was too late so we decided to walk through the Ginza area. This is a very expensive shopping area with a lot of people. It was getting late so we decided to try and find a Japanese place to eat. There were plenty of places to eat but understanding the menu was a challenge. Also most of the restaurants we stopped at didn’t seem too interested in serving two westerners who didn’t speak Japanese. We did eventually find a nice place down one of the small side streets. After taking off our shoes we were taken to one of the little rooms to eat. (The Japanese seem to enjoy their privacy.) The menu had pictures so it was a bit easier to order. The food was good and the atmosphere was quaint. What a great way to spend the end of our first day.

We had planned to get up early the next day and head out on the town. This was harder to do than we had thought. The Japanese hotel rooms are well amenitied and the bathrooms are for lack of better words “to die for”. The showers are instantly hot with great pressure. The toilets are in a whole other world. They are electronic with heated seats, a whole variety of spray settings, the lids are censored and lift when you enter and flush when you stand up.

After checking out at the latest possible minute we walked around the underground portion of Tokyo since it was raining above ground. We felt like ants trying to find our way around in a strange nest. There are just as many, if not more, people below ground then there are above.

Before we knew it, it was time to catch our train back to the airport for our marathon flight. We landed in Dallas on time thankfully as we only had an hour to catch our connecting flight to Lima. They had express passed ready for us and we thought this would make things easier. The passes did allow us to go to the front of the queue as there were many check points (far more than I thought was necessary for a connecting flight and the fact that we were not even staying in the states). This is when I (Dan) hit a snag. For some reason my passport was flagged for further evaluation. After a 20 minute wait and a cleared passport we were back on the move. We did just catch our flight even though we were the last passengers to board - did we get the stares. The flights were uneventful and the interesting part is that we landed in Dallas three hours before we took off from Tokyo. The International Dateline is a weird and wonderful thing.

Japanese Family Robinson