Getting there is half the battle

I'm in bed in a hotel in Asakusabashi. In Tokyo. In Japan. When the hell did this happen? It still hasn't fully sunk in yet that we're actually here. To be fair nothing really penetrates the 12-hour mid-day plane ride other than "I need to be horizontal ASAP".

The ride itself was far, far better than my anxiety-riddled mind had built it up to be. A sorely needed preface to this entire blog: I have never been abroad before. I've never been much of anywhere before, actually. If my travel experience were to be summed up as one trip, it would be a 1.5 hour journey on Southwest. All peanuts, no pretzels. So imagine my surprise when JAL took my hand with a gentle pat and showed me what leg room looked like. Shining, shimmering, splendid. Maybe not so much splendid as surprisingly tolerable. Hamu said my insistence upon taking JAL has ruined her for life. 12 hours, 5 movies, 2 meals, and many failed attempts at sleep later, we landed at Narita.

Food! Because I never eat before a plane ride, good job me.

After a trip to check out what manner of robots lived in Japanese restrooms—no robots, but hey, rest of the world? I see what you're all on about with our weird toilet half doors—we dragged ourselves through Immigration, Customs, and the obligatory pocket wifi and JR pass pickup. All of this culminated in the crown jewel of travel: figuring out how the hell we get to our hotel. Because horizontal, now, please. I could immediately tell this trip was going to be nothing but pay back for my many hours playing "Spot the Tourist" growing up. Neither of us are country bumpkins, mass transit is still our preferred method of getting around San Francisco, but really that's just adorable in comparison to the three-headed hydra of Tokyo.

Praise be to technology, because somehow we fumbled our way through with a combination of Google Maps and "fuck it!" If polygamy was legal, or marrying non-humans for that matter, I would have swept the disembodied English voice giving transfer instructions off its proverbial feet. We hopped on the Keisei line, swapped at Aoto, and dragged our miserable heaps of flesh off at Asakusabashi 1 hour and somethingsomething minutes later. I still don't know how that happened. Somehow we made it.

Sleep first, Akihabara tomorrow.

-Usagi