Arrived to a rainy Tokyo at around 4pm. Super long walk to get to customs and immigration, and again thankful for family priority lines. It was a smooth process as mom had luckily done everything right (yay!) online prior to arrival. Our driver was right where he was supposed to be, and we drove through wet rush hour traffic to get to our AirBnb.
Our first accommodations for our grand adventure are very nice! It’s a small Tokyo apartment with a double bed in the “bedroom” and a double pull out couch in the “livingroom”. When the sliding doors are open, it’s just one big space. Tiny kitchen with two gas burners, tiny fridge and freezer, microwave, kettle, washing machine and a complicated Japanese toilet. The entry way, storage room, toilet and bathroom all have a strong smell coming from the pipes, which is highly unpleasant. There’s a door blocking it all from the main living area, so the apartment itself smells fine. It was also about one million degrees in here when we arrived! Luckily, after much mucking around with the three different, Japanese-only, electrical panels on the wall, we located the air conditioner’s remote control on the coffee table, and were finally able to blast it at 16C to cool down while we stepped out for a quick bite to eat.
One block away we found a small husband-and-wife run restaurant which was able to get us a pork katsu curry over rice and an omurice (omelette over rice). Had to run across the street to 7Eleven to get cash as they are a cash only business, and we hadn’t gotten that far in our adventure yet. Maylin at this point was so tired she almost had a meltdown, and Téa was not quite done being nauseous, so they both ate very little.
Stopped in again at 7Eleven to get snacks, all the videos we’ve been watching in preparation for this trip had made us very hungry for the convenience store grabs! The first haul consisted of onigiri, egg sandos, teriyaki pork and egg sandos, Coolish ice cream, melonpan and a few other things. The sandwiches were so tempting that Maylin had to eat an entire one right after getting home, half before and half after brushing teeth, even though she was super full and wouldn’t eat at dinner… Téa and I crashed into bed, and Maylin stayed up with Joe to eat her sandwich.