Saturday, October 26
After a surprisingly easy flight, I found navigating Narita airport similarly unproblematic. Internet coaches had prescribed a routine for arrival: 1) get lots of cash, because Japan, for all its hypermodernity, is surprisingly credit card unfriendly; 2) get a “cash card” and charge it with lots of money, because the Tokyo subways are privatized and the cash card is the only thing accepted everywhere; and 3) turn in my prepaid vouchers for a Japan Rail Pass. This last all went smoothly for me; my poor wife, on the other hand, was coming from Burma and arrived at 6 AM at Haneda, Tokyo’s second airport. It took her three hours to get her rail pass, and she couldn’t find an ATM that took international credit cards (that, too, is a Japanese peculiarity: the very best ATM’s for gringos are, wait for it, 7-Eleven!).
After 40 minutes on the Narita Express, eerily reminiscent of the Heathrow Express, I found myself in the bowels of Tokyo Station, one of the busiest stations in the world. As we’d been told, virtually all the signage now has a brief English explanation, so that, too, alleviated any trepidation about getting around. Totally unlike Burma, our only previous Asian experience, where the signs are not just in Burmese: even the maps, insofar as they exist, are totally incomprehensible.
Reunited with my wife at our hotel, we ventured out for a bite and discovered, to our delight, that the famous ramen shop Ippudo was 100 yards away. There are now sleeker branches around the world, but the Ginza locale retains a lot of its original character: small, friendly, rough edged, with stools ranged along rustic wooden counters full of condiments. This is Hakata style ramen, with – thin, non-curly straight paler yellow noodles, basked in rich milky tonkatsu pork bone broth. Mine came with think slices of tonkatsu, a whole, runny egg, seaweed, and cabbage. Really delicious. I could actually survive the whole trip just on ramen, but I’m sure more delights await us. We also shared a great plate of little pan fried dumplings.
A short, but memorable first day in Japan.