Japan - Day One

Japan is a place I've heard and seen a lot about, but I haven't managed to actually come visit here... until now of course. Its always seemed like an intriguing country, a mash of eastern and western influences and an extremely densely populated place. And although I took Japanese for awhile during school, that hasn't really helped me so far as I only remember the extreme basics of the language. Its an odd experience having some trying to speak Japanese to you at McDonalds and having absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

It all started off with a flight from Edmonton to Vancouver, an airport where I first arrived in Canada. It was a lot nicer this time however since Spring is rolling around, the weather was nice and the airport was surprisingly not busy. Its nice when places aren't extremely packed full of people. There were some interesting places in the airport like a huge aquarium filled with salmon and starfish. After quite a few hours of waiting around there and a couple of lunches it was finally time to board the Tokyo Express, which was a fairly small Airbus plane.

The downside to the smallness of the plane was that it wasn't equipped with the new lcd screens I had become familiar with. Flying to Canada with Air New Zealand, you get your own screen where you can choose from around 20 different new movies or television shows, enough to keep one occupied for the really long travel time. This time however there was only a couple of shared screens, and the only films that played were Enchanted and some other movie involving some old lady and Morgan Freeman, not my first choices of course. The flight took 10 hours which is slightly less than going to New Zealand, but is still a really long time to be cramped into a seat.

Finally arriving in Narita, Tokyo, the weather was warm but really humid. In fact the humidity level was so high that it formed a massive cloud of mist over the entire city. My first impressions of Japan entirely different than what I expected. First of all, it was like landing in a tropical island full of bamboo and other greenery. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen plants look as green as they do in Japan. It must be the humidity or something. Even traveling into the main city on the Limousine Bus, the streets were lined with trees and gardens which I found really surprising. The Tokyo area is the most densely populated area in the world, with the area holding 35 million people in a land-mass much smaller than the state of California. Hence my surprise to see so much greenery.

We did a little bit of walking around in Sunshine City, a large mall right next to the hotel, but I was rather tired from all the traveling. Another thing that really called me out was the time difference, with me going to bed at 9pm and waking up fully at around 3am. I guess I'll get used to that in the days to come. So far it seems like a really interesting city, and I'll be looking forward to exploring the town more today.