What a long, long day. Friday morning Trevor was nice enough to pick me up and take me to SeaTac about 10 AM. Breezed through check-in and security so I spent a couple of hours working on laptop while I waited for my 1:30 flight.
The flight was a long, uneventful 10 hours. I tried to catch a couple hours of sleep without much luck. Arrived at Narita to a cold, gloomy downpour, about 4 PM local time, midnight Seattle time.
Getting through immigration was pretty easy although I had to wait in a 20+ minute queue. Once through, Teman met me in the arrival lobby so I wouldn’t have to try to find his place which was kind of him since he lives more than an hour away from the Airport by public transportation. I’m not saying that it would have been impossible for me to find on my own but if I was a betting man I know where my money would have gone.
There are basically two groups of public transportation options in Tokyo - the lines operated by JR and those who are run by everyone else. I had picked up a two week JR rail pass through JALPAK before I left but I wanted to save it for the pricey shinkansen trips I was planning on taking later so we took option B. Picked up a ¥3000 Passnet card and 1 train, 1 subway, and a 10 minute walk later walk we arrived at Teman’s place - local time 7:30 PM, Seattle time 3:30 AM.
We drop my stuff off and after a quick tour of Teman’s sweet, sweet place we headed off back to the subway to an English-pub-themed expat bar not too far away in the heart of Shibuya so Teman could pick up some food and we could catch up a bit more. On the way I had a Jet Set Radio Future flashback seeing the Shibuya bus terminal - it looks exactly like it does in the game.
We got off the subway at the end of the line, the Hachiko exit. Shibuya was bright, busy, and more than a little overwhelming. Luckily, the rain by now had tapered off to a mere drizzle. Given my near-zombie state I didn’t even try to take any pictures, I need to go back and poke around later since we didn’t really dally. The pub was a fun little smokey place that had a wide range of English beers tap, bit of a change after Seattle’s smoking ban. Beer was a bit pricey, UK pints were in the ¥800-¥1000 range (approx $8-$10).
Made our way back to home and I had a shower. By this point I had gone past tired and come out the other side. Finally went to bed at midnight local time, 8 AM Seattle time. For me, that’s a long day.