Arriving in Japan

Yes, we are doing fine... :-) - Excuses for not writing the last 2 weeks but we have been crazy busy, enjoying ourselves in Japan.

Before we left we spoke about which countries we like to visit. Matthew especially wanted to go to Japan.
Sonja was not especially keen but... Japan it was.

Even that we never visited Japan before, we did not really prepare ourselves, and that leads to interesting moments, to say the least.

Let us start from the beginning:
We bought a travel guide in Canada (The 'Rough Guide' we took).
Just before leaving Vancouver we Skyped with a hostel in Tokyo and made a booking. So far so good.

China Eastern Airlines flew us from Vancouver to Shanghai, China, where we transfered to our flight to Tokyo. One way, good value, just the arrival was a bit... and that was an issue.

We arrived too late to take a metro to the city, the hostel closed at 2300 hrs and there was no way to make it on time.
The airport was about to close, no signs in English were to be found to find a reasonable hotel in the airport area. The only one was around USD 600.00 per night. Which we were not planning to take!

Security was wondering what we were still doing at the airport, and we tried to speak with them. This was next to impossible due to the amount of English they understood / spoke.
Anyway, to make a long story short, our first night was at the airport.

Around 20 people either had really early flights and would not be able to arrive on time if they would not wait at the airport, and some got stuck like we did. The airport doors closed, part of the arrival hall was dedicated for us, the lights went out, and during the whole night security staff was staying with us. Looking after us so to say.

On the picture: The lights just went back on. Robin just got up, Matthew was just waking up.
The sleeping bags and mats were just packed up again.

Our first full day in Japan started. We were ready :-)


The people in the hostel were fine with us arriving a day late. It seems like it is common practise that people get stuck. How strange is that!! But rules are rules in Japan, and that means that we checked in and were basically put out on the street right away.
"Between 1000 and 1700 hrs the hostel needs to be cleaned and all guests shall leave", the message was.
Seriously a joke!! It was cooking hot outside and we could only return 7 hours later.

Anyway, we live with the rules and jumped into life in Tokyo.

We were so exhausted the first few days: the heat, the lacking English knowledge of the Japanese citizens - which we did not at all expect - , a totally different culture, all the new experiences, new food and so on, and so on.

Japan is Manga (Japanese comics) and Anime, and various museums and centers are dedicated to Manga, animation and design. A very interesting place to visit was the Ghibli Museum, it is about the Ghibli animation film studios. Look it up on Wikipedia if you are into this stuff. It was a great place to visit.

Not everything, or better not everyone, was new to us in Tokyo. Rolf, our travel companion for a few weeks on our 2nd worldtrip lives in Tokyo with his girlfriend since a year. We met him in Shinjuku, the picture is at the famous statue of the dog Hachiko.
Thanks Rolf for showing us around - and guiding us a bit into the right direction :-)

So far for a start. More to follow soon.
All is going well for us.