sticky tokyo

so i'm finally here... i arrived at around 1am vancouver time and i am now finally at my hotel, 4:36am vancouver time. really, it's only 8:36pm tokyo time and i'm trying hard not to go to bed that early... it's easier than i thought though.

the flight was easy, surprisingly. 9 hours went by very quickly, especially with watching 3 movies and playing some games. i had a great seat too at the very back of the plane: there was only 2 seats in that section instead of 3 and there was room between the seat and the wall, so i had extra room to stetch my legs. i didn't really manage to sleep though. i seem to never be able to sleep on planes when i ought to.

i had never been on such a huge airplane. it hard stairs and everything. the first class section was about the size of a regular plane (about 30 rows) ... and i was the before last row at 65. japan airline means personal entertainment systems as well, so that was great. and they had the ingenious idea of placing a camera at the front of the plane and at the bottom, so you can watch takeoff like the pilot and watch the land/water bellow you as you fly. food was alright, but they only serve japanese jellyfish on the return flight from tokyo. damn!

once at the airport it took for ever to get my bag. and then taking the train was a tad confusing even though i had this detailed information sheet on how to get to my hotel. i guess i was afraid to get on a wrong train and not be able to go back. overall, it took over 2.5 hours to get here.

and here isn't that great. the area seems pretty boring, looks like nothing really. seems to lack life. but the hotel was cheap, so that's good. the hotel was also a long walk from the station, and i was getting afraid that i might have missed it or gotten lost. i had a sweet japanese men help me find the place, and he kept hitting his cheek saying he was drunk. he was really nice! i guess that i really was looking confused.

now i'm here and my room is small and boiling hot. this isn't really a ryokan but whatever, it does the job. i'll probably look for something else though for the rest of the week, if i can find anything cheaper. side note: why is it that all cheap hotels around here are for men only?

i saw an amazing red sunset from the train. the sun was red like on the flag. but it sets pretty early, and by 7 it's pretty dark out there. so different than vancouver, or garibaldi, where we still saw blue ski at 10pm.

so there was many more things that i wanted to say but i'm too tired to remember them now... i'll update more later, especially since the hotel has free internet access.

i need to sleep!!!! but i need to shower first. tokyo is freaking hot!!!