Saturday, May 15, 2005
17:00 - Arrive at Narita Airport. Flight arrives 30 minutes early. Last half hour of flight was still QUITE long.

17:30 – Bus arrives at airport. The bus is scheduled to take us to our hotel, as well as make stop at several other hotels in the same general vicinity. The ride seems to take forever.

19:30 – Finally arrive at hotel after what seems like an eternity. We were the 5th stop on the bus. Each stop seems to drag on for unnecessarily long periods of time. If the bus is supposed to be the easiest way to get to the hotel, I’d hate to see the more difficult options.

Check into the hotel: The Westin Tokyo. Pretty classy joint if you ask me. This is by far the nicest hotel accommodations I have ever seen in person; and this was my address for the next two nights. Checking in was a breeze, and we were in our room before too long.

20:00 – After 12 hours in the air and another several more hours spent transporting ourselves to the hotel, it’s time to get cleaned up. Not long after we get our things settled, Brian informs me that the bathroom has a bidet. This would prove to be my first bidet experience. Let’s hope it’s not my last. We joked that if either of us were to get a case of traveler’s sickness, we’d be in good hands with our new toy. Luckily, neither of us had to make use of our bidet friend for anything other than normal functions. You can say what you want about bidets, but I could see myself installing one in a future home.

20:30 – We are very tired after each of us having been up nearly 24 hours with only a scattered hour or two of rest combined. However, we decided to stay up as late as possible, in order to make sure we could adjust to the local time. We decided to set out on foot and look for a nearby restaurant. This proved more difficult than we thought. The Westin Tokyo was connected to a very nice and upscale shopping mall, so that was our destination. We did not know it at the time, but we would go through this mall several times over the next two days. This shopping center was called the Yebisu Garden Palace.

20:45 - We were hungry and travel weary, so we did not need to go far into the mall area to find a place to eat. We walked around for about 5-10 minutes and found that we could follow one of two options. The first would be McDonalds. The second was one of several Japanese restaurants in the area, with this particular restaurant having European options in addition to traditional Japanese. Rather than appearing like stupid Americans, we decided to pass on McDonalds and try the more traditional restaurant.

How did we arrive at the decision to choose this restaurant over other Japanese restaurants? Well, it’s not really a question of what had the best menu, or even what menu items sounded the most appealing. We didn’t have this opportunity, because the menus were written entirely in Japanese! No, our food decision was based entirely on the plastic food displays outside of the restaurants. Fortunately for us non-native speakers, most Japanese restaurants have plastic food displays outside of their doors. It makes for an easy decision on whether or not you would like to dine in a particular restaurant.

The plastic displays outside of our restaurant of choice seemed to be the most flexible of the options presented to us. However, as soon as we got into the restaurant and were asked to order, I forgot entirely what I had seen in plastic, and had trouble deciding what to order. I narrowed my choices down to two. The first was a “pizza” with god knows what toppings on it. The plastic food didn’t really indicate what was on top of the pizza. I didn’t like my chances, so I chose the second option, which happened to be several pieces of raw fish. Brian ordered the lone beef option on the menu.

Brian’s beef dish came out first, and they put it down in between the two of us. I’m not sure if they thought that he was going to share with me, but we found it odd that they placed the dish in the middle of the table, rather than in front of him. My fish dish came out a few minutes later. To this day I still don’t know what type of fish I was eating. At this point, I think that the less I know the better off I will be. The fish was light to white colored, and some of the skin was still on. The skin was a gray color, and didn’t look very appealing. The name of the item on the menu was something like “Carpacolia” or something along those lines. Given the Asian stereotypes I knew growing up in Minnesota, I had the thought in the back of my mind that I was possibly eating Carp. I tried not to think about it as I ate the 5 small pieces of fish on my plate. How’d it taste? Well, it seemed fine to me. The glorious part of eating fish Japanese style is the fact that you can cover up any and all taste if you want; you just need to add enough Wassabi and soy sauce. The dish ended up being decent, although the portions were quite small. For about $12 American, I felt pretty ripped off. Brian felt the same way given the puniness of his steak. We would later find that the best way to purchase food in Japan is on a “per item” basis. More on this later. As for drink, Brian and I each enjoyed a combination of two kinds of the local “Yebisu” beer; it was the equivalent of a Japanese “Black and Tan”. The beer was decent, but pretty bland, definitely not the best offering I have experienced from Japan. When it came time to pay the bill, we had both spent $20 for a meal that left us feeling unfulfilled.

21:15 – A half an hour after we began looking for restaurants, we were already done eating. The service was quite efficient, and they didn’t seem to mind that we didn’t speak any English. The best part of eating meals in Japan is that we don’t have to tip after meals. Something that I had trouble adjusting to, given the importance placed on tipping in American culture (of course tipping is something I absolutely hate, but I put up with just so that I don’t have to hear people complain about it. It’s amazing the things that put up with just so that we don’t have to be bothered by others). Needless to say, I gave the server a 500 Yen tip (~$5), not knowing that this was the Japanese equivalent to giving a piece of paper with my pal Benjamin Franklins face to a waitress in the US. Several bows and “arrigatos” later, we were back to the hotel.

21:30 – Back at the hotel, we started watching a movie on the tele. Luckily, the hotel had satellite channels, and some things were in English with Japanese subtitles, which is much preferred to listening to American shows with Japanese voices dubbed over.

22:00 – I fall asleep while watching the movie. Brian talks to Michelle on the phone and then goes to bed as well.