Winter travel always has risks.
We booked our taxi half an hour early and were at the airport by 9. We had been able to upgrade (for a price) when we checked in on Friday. So we used the Maple Leaf Lounge for a basic breakfast. But English Premiership soccer was playing and Scott wanted to see some matches instead of staying in the lounge. We went to Chilis where multiple matches were showing.
As we were watching tv, killing time, we started getting messages from Sidney saying her plane in Graz was delayed due to fog ad there was also fog in Munich where she was scheduled to land. Her flight from Munich to Tokyo was due to take off 11:55 am (Calgary time), half an hour after us. Our flight was delayed because of too much luggage to store and the need to de-ice. I left my phone on until take off at 12:30 but still had not heard from Sid that she had left Graz.
We were very worried we would not be meeting up in Narita as planned.
It didn’t stop us enjoying the extras during the flight. I managed to eat two meals, watch two movies and sleep 5 hours during the over 11 hour flight.
We landed an hour late and saw the flight that Sid was supposed to have been on had landed ahead of us. While we collected our luggage then went to pick up our rental phones, we saw no sign of Sidney.
After getting two phones, we then went to get train tickets for the latter part of our journey. There was a big long queue so we used the time waiting to try to figure out how to connect with Allie. We were able to talk to her and she told us Sid had been sent to Frankfurt and would be arriving 8:30 on Monday morning.
By 6:30 we had most of our train tickets and then booked the next airport limousine bus–which is just a bus that goes to major hotels in central Tokyo.
The ride was rather boring in the dark and Scott and I kept falling asleep.
It took almost 2 hours and we were the second stop. Armed with a detailed map and the GPS on our rental phones we walked to the apartment we are renting for 8 nights. Japanese streets do not have street signs, Most of the streets don’t have names. The blocks and buildings are numbered and the general area chome has a number within a district. We are in Akasaka district which is in the southwest of central Tokyo. The manager of the rental had a photo of the building so we were pretty sure we found it. We could walk into the building without a key because Japan has such low crime rates, the doors aren’t locked. As we were just inside we heard raucous laughter that sounded familiar.
We dumped our luggage and headed out for a late dinner at a restaurant Allie had reserved earlier that day. It is an izakaya type of place, small plates of food, although it lacks the big list of drinks which are a key feature of an izakaya.
Had to use the English and Japanese menu. There were items on the Japanese menu that weren’t on the English menu–what’s with that?
Homemade tofu by drawing was the English description of this fresh tofu dish.
Daikon and tomato salad with wee crispy fried sardines
Fried tofu with dashi. Less than a year ago, Allie would have said she didn’t like tofu.
Tempura gobo
Forgot to take a photo of yakitori chicken two ways, plus gohan and some kind of tsukemono
It was after 11:30 and the restaurant was closing. Back to the apartment but Scott and I headed to bed. Gotta figure out how to meet up with Sid in the morning.
LHWatson's Travel Blog 