First Night in Tokyo

So, I'm sitting here watching a crazy Japanese cartoon (anime). I never really understood why people like these shows so much. Anyway, I'm happy to announce that I don't think I have jet lag! After flying over 9,000 miles (18 hours on a plane in a period of 24 hours), I'm feeling great. I went to bed last night around 9:45 pm and I first woke up at 4:52 am. I went back to bed until about 7:00 am. Anyway, I'm ready to hit the town running. I'm excited to see what Maurine has in store for Yale and me. Last night, we arrived in Tokyo about 5:00 pm and it took us about 20 minutes to find our hostel, even though it was a 1-minute walk from the train station (eki). I asked some people for directions and they totally didn't have any idea where it was. Welcome to Japan. That's how it goes. You're in the right neighborhood, but people don't know where things are. Anyway, we were finally able to get to our hostel and check-in.

It's a nice, little place. Little is the key word. As Yale like to says, it's a 10x10 box w/ a "couch of death" (think Melissa and Diane's old couch). The A/C wasn't working last night, so I woke up a little sweaty, but I figured it out this morning. I'm excited to sleep in a cool room tonight! Anyway, right by our hostel, there is a Denny's, 7-11, AM/PM, and Baskin Robbins. We ate at Denny's last night. Yale wanted to know if I wanted something *special* for my first meal in Japan. I wasn't really in the mood for ramen. Plus, we'll probably go out to eat with my friend today at some Japanese place. The food at Denny's wasn't bad (not your typical Denny's—I had beef curry and Yale had Spaghetti al carbonara). However, the service was horrible! It took our waitress a super long time to take our order (the food came out promptly, though) and they never refilled our water cups even though we asked them to. Afterwards, we waited for our check (which never came), so we walked to the front of the restaurant and waited another 5 minutes before they realized that we wanted to pay. There were only 2 servers for the entire restaurant (about 20-30 tables).

After Denny's, we ran into a Canadian friend that we met on the subway from the airport to Tokyo. We wandered around with him for a little bit. There was a Shinto shrine nearby that we took a couple of pics at and that's when I started to get tired. We headed back to the hostel around 9 (we're in a quite part of town—not much to see w/o taking the subway) and I was quickly off to bed.

Well, I'm off for the day! I'll write more later tonight.