Trip and Arrival!

I haven't actually read Christopher's post, so a lot of this might be repeat information.  Our flight here was relatively uneventful and wonderfully empty.  We were upgraded to EconomyPlus for free, which put us at the very front of economy - great, since I made us get up to walk around about every hour (no blood clots for us!).  I forced Christopher to play two-player Time's Up repeatedly. After landing, we got our luggage and went through customs and what-not.  Then we found a Citibank ATM (great, since we would pay foreign transaction fees otherwise) and pulled out some cash.  Necessary, since - despite what Citibank in Dallas thinks - even Tokyo is still a very cash-based society. The bankers at Citibank could not understand why I was concerned about how to get cash in Tokyo.  "It's Tokyo, everyone takes credit cards."  Understandable assumption, but oh so wrong.

After several train rides, we arrived at Ningyocho station and made our way up to the street level.  Just so you know, street level was like four flights up and we were carrying our luggage.  *huff puff huff puff*  We then made an educated guess about which direction to walk and arrived at our hotel with no turning around.

The hotel room is... very, very small.  The bed is as hard as a rock.  Sorry, that's an exaggeration.  The bed is as hard as a rock with a blanket on top of it.

After checking in, we ate dinner at Yoshinoya.  So good and so cheap!  We then visited two kombini (7-11 and FamilyMart) and a grocery store, so we would have breakfast for the morning.  We went to bed around 10 pm Tokyo time.  I woke up at 1:30 (8:30 am Seattle, 10:30 am Dallas), 2:30, and got up at 4:40.  My brain really wanted me to get up at 1:30 am (HELLO, it's TEN-THIRTY in the morning, it said), but I slept as long as I could.

I got Christopher up at 5:00 am.  Y'know, so we could go see the fish market (Tsukiji) early in the morning.  Then at 5:30, I checked to make sure Tsukiji is open today.  It's not!  Christopher was very unhappy.

I've already managed to buy adorable postcards, so make sure to let us know if you want postcards!