Today, I arrived in Tokyo on my flight from Paris, France.
When I arrived in Tokyo via Paris, I was exhausted. As usual, I was not able to sleep at all on the plane.
When we arrived in Tokyo, I was met at the aircraft door by a man with the smallest wheelchair I had ever seen. I did get in it, but only just. It may well have been fine for Japanese people, but for any European, it would have been a squeeze. The wheelchair was so small it reminded me of a seat on a Ryanair plane, tight and uncomfortable.
The man who had met me at the plane took me to collect my luggage, and then we went through customs, and he helped me fill out a customs form. His help was required because the text on the questionnaire was so small that even with my glasses on, I couldn't see it. After passing through customs, I was wheeled through to immigration. This seemed to take a bit longer, and they opened and checked my suitcase before looking at my documents and questioning where I was going and how I would be travelling. The girl there was very polite but called her supervisor over to recheck my paperwork before letting me through.
The man pushing my wheelchair took me through to the arrivals hall, where I was supposed to be met. I couldn't see anyone waiting for me, with my name on a board or the name of the company on my paperwork. The man pushing the wheelchair took my paperwork and went back through arrivals, checking with all the people collecting travellers to see if they were waiting for me. He came back after not finding anyone and hailed another lady who also looked at my paperwork and rang Logitravel and SMY Travel, the companies I was supposed to be travelling with and who were supposed to meet me. She rang both the phone numbers in Spain and the local Japanese numbers. She could not get any answer from anyone.
I was by now beginning to worry that I had been sold a dud, that there was no holiday and that I was stuck in Japan with nowhere to go. The man pushing my wheelchair and the lady who had come to help stayed with me and took me to the information desk in the arrivals hall. The man returned to the gate with the wheelchair, but the lady stayed to help me and went and spoke to the information desk. The information desk put a call out over the tannoy system for the tour rep, who should have been waiting for me.
A short time later, a lady from yet another tour company appeared, saying she was my tour rep and that I should wait at the information desk as she also had another couple to meet. A short time later, the couple appeared at the desk, and a few minutes later, the tour rep returned. She took us to the taxi rank, hailed a taxi and put us all in a taxi to our different hotels. She wasn't a tour rep who would be travelling with us but was there to get us to the hotels we were booked into.
The driver drove us through Tokyo to our hotels, and I was dropped off first. When I went in, I walked to the check-in desk to check-in. The man at the desk confirmed my booking but told me I couldn't have my room until 4 pm. It was still only 6:30 am. I rang Logitravel in Spain and spoke to a rep who couldn't give a toss that I couldn't get into my room for another 9 ½ hours. He told me to pay for a room if I wanted to get into my room before. I had now been awake for around 30 hours, had flown halfway around the world, and was getting very angry. I asked the guy at the check-in desk where I could get a coffee, and he directed me to a cafe up the road as there was nowhere open to get a coffee in the hotel.
I moved to a small seating area in the hotel lobby to calm down before I said or did something I would regret. I worked out how much the ¥12,000 I would have to pay for the room would be and decided that I was so tired that I had no choice but to pay. When you have been awake a long time and are a bit worried, ¥12,000 sounds like an astronomical amount, but it worked out at around €73, so I bit the proverbial bullet, paid the money and checked into my room early.
I went to sleep almost as soon as I lay on the bed in my room, and I slept till around 5 pm. When I woke, I got up and took a shower before going to the hotel lobby, where I was due to meet the rest of the people on my tour. When I went downstairs, there was no one there. I sat there for a while, and a few people came down, but no one spoke English, and I could see no tour rep. I walked around the lobby and saw a desk with a sign on it. I wondered if this could be a tour desk.
Two people were sitting in front of the desk, and as I leaned over to read the sign, I said hello to them. It turned out that they were part of my tour. They were from Australia and were also looking for a tour rep. As I talked to them, we were approached by a Spanish lady with a clipboard. It turned out that she and a Japanese lady were to be our tour guides. She checked off our names, and soon, there was a group of us from all over the world: Australia, America, Spain, Germany, Columbia, Mexico, Korea and France. This was not what I was expecting as I had booked an English tour, not a tour with Spanish and Japanese tour guides who could speak English to a mixed group of people.
We were soon ushered aboard a coach and driven to a local train station. With the Spanish lady leading us and the Japanese lady following behind us to watch for stragglers, we caught several trains into the Shinjuku district of Tokyo to go for dinner. We walked through an old area of Tokyo that is still as it was when it was built. The alleyway had tiny restaurants serving street food to locals. They all looked fantastic, but each one would only seat a maximum of four or five people, and our group of around 30 continued to walk until we arrived at a modern restaurant Mo Mo.
We were all shown into the restaurant, and because we all spoke English, I sat with the Australian people I had met at the hotel earlier. The meal was quite strange. There was a large soup tureen with a consume in it. At the end of the table were many slices of bacon, which we were shown how to put in the tureen to allow it to cook. We were given some salad to put in, and as we ate, more bacon was put down for us. After a short time, we were offered different items, including chicken, some tofu, and tofu skin. It was all quite strange but tasted okay. The tofu was lovely, and the skin was soft. It looked like shredded wheat that had gone soggy in the tureen, but it tasted good.
Unfortunately, to get a drink, I had to ask Mark, one of my Australian companions, to let me get out of the tight space we had been sitting in. I got a Coca-Cola and sat back down. After we had eaten everything in front of us, we were able to help ourselves to ice cream, but again, it meant I had to ask Mark to move so that I could get out. The food was okay but nothing special, and I hoped it would get better. After about an hour, we were all ushered back into Tokyo and walked back towards the train station.
In the short distance we walked, we lost a few people and had to wait outside the station while one of the guides went in search of the lost people. It did give us a chance to watch the neon signs and the fantastic display they were putting on. Two of the large 3D screens above our heads were on different buildings, and they had a great show of a cat walking through a cat flap on one building and then reappearing through a cat flap on the other building. At one point, the rear end of the cat could be seen on one building while the head appeared on the other building on the other side of the square. The quality of the graphics was exceptional.
Our Japanese guide reappeared but had been unable to find the people missing from our tour. We walked back to the station and took our two trains back to the hotel. As we crossed the road from the station near our hotel, I checked with the guide that I was where I thought I was and then walked in the opposite direction to the others as they went back to the hotel. A short walk of a couple of minutes took me to a 7-11 store.
I had done some research on Japan before I went and knew that 7-11 stores in Japan were not like the ones in America, but I was amazed by the difference. They had great food selections and anything else I would probably need during my stay. As I was tired, I looked around quickly before buying some water and walking back down the road to my hotel. I went straight back to my room and was asleep in minutes.
Sheraton Miyako, Tokyo.
Tonight, the hotel for my stay in Tokyo was the Sheraton Miyako.
Address: 1-1-50, Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8640.