When I decided to start this journey, I asked my brothers if they wanted to join me for any part of it. I mean, who doesn’t love a travel companion along the way? My younger brother Joshua definitely was in but couldn’t decide where he wanted to join me. Then my longtime childhood friend, Stacy Chase, and her husband, Matt, told me they wanted to join me in Japan for the Cherry Blossom Festivals. Matt and I had been talking about Japan ever since I’d come back from my first deployment. Matt, Stacy, and Joshua all play indoor soccer and do CrossFit together. Not two days after Matt and Stacy rogered up for Japan, did Joshua call and tell me that he had booked his ticket as well. Joshua had also always wanted to see the Japanese Cherry Blossoms and couldn’t turn down the opportunity, especially when Matt and Stacy were going.
So here I am at Narita Airport, eagerly waiting for Matt, Stacy, and Joshua to make it through customs. I’m literally vibrating with energy! I also haven’t seen any family or friends in a month and a half, so yeah, I’m doubly excited!
After a squealy energetic reunion with Matt, Stacy and I, and the standard subdued excitement 😉 from my brother, we head off for Tokyo. I knew it was going to take a little over and hour to get to our hotel. We jumped on the train, to take it to the subway, and then to take it to our hotel. Not 10 minutes into our train ride, we lose Joshua to sleep, then Stacy goes, and finally Matt. I am left on this train still vibrating with energy and excitement, and the other three are PASSED OUT! Come on guys, we haven’t even made it to the hotel yet! I will let you sleep for now, but you better rally later!
Like four little ducks in a row we navigate the Japan Railway (JR) and Subway Systems.
When we surfaced from the Subway System we find out that it is pouring rain out, and we have a 0.3-mile walk to our hotel. We make the 0.3-mile dash in style, bags in tow, and arrive at our hotel looking like a pack of wet dogs. We get our room keys from the front desk, and literally have to cram ourselves into this, no joke, two foot by three foot elevator, because we refused to take two elevators. Stacy has to reach over two suitcases and hug Joshua for balance, to reach behind him to push the number for our floor. Par for the trip! We all laugh in utter exhaustion, as we open our rooms, to find a semi-double bed room that you can barely fit one, let alone two people in. Apparently everything is smaller in Japan. Joshua tested and was about a foot short of reaching from one side of the room to the other with his arms…it was THAT small.
Like getting to any hotel room, the first thing you do after checking out the beds are to check out the bathroom. Quickly, after realizing the bathroom might as well have been as big as a hall closet, Matt came running into our room like a kid in a candy store to point this observation out. His knees barely cleared the door when it was shut, and he was sitting on the pot. Not to mention the half-length deep soaker tub was only half an arms length from him. He was also fascinated that the toilet basically sang to you (the sound of running water) when you sat down. …And then he found the bidet. I have never seen a grown man more fascinated or excited than I did just then. He came out of the bathroom and was so excited about his “bum-bath”. It was also hilarious to see two 6’3” guys barely clear the ceiling and have the shower hit them at face level. Like I said, everything is…smaller.
I knew that the Japanese don’t do AC like we do in the States. They have wall units, if anything, and even when a room is being heated they turn it off, when they aren’t using it or when no one is in the room. Joshua and I found out the hard way, half way through the night that what was labeled AirCon was actually Heat when they have the heat turned on. The room was warm to our US standards when we first got into our rooms so of course we find the first thing that says AC in English (most everything else is in Kanji) and turn it to HI. At 1 am, both of us are sweating and wide awake and tired, not the time you want to be trying to decipher Kanji to make it cooler. We couldn’t figure out, when it was so darn hot! We could feel the heat blasting, but how to turn it off was a mystery to us. Finally, I try the window to see if it will open, and it does. So we open the window to the 40 degree F weather outside and release the sweltering heat. At this point, we were both awake, so we just kinda laid there chatting a bit and laughing at the whole situation. About an hour later though, it started to rain and someone was apparently smoking on a balcony close by, so we had to shut the window. We both got another hour of sleep before finally throwing in the towel and just getting up for the morning.
Matt and Stacy had realized prior to crashing the night before that the AC also meant Heat, so they had avoided the mistake that we made although it still wasn’t much cooler in their room. Maybe its because they have young kids, but they slept like babies and were amped to start the day! What a hilarious first day. I can’t wait to see what the rest of Japan has to offer.
