Hello from Japan

Good morning from Tokyo, Japan! Or good evening where I am. If you’ve been keeping up with me on my Instagram stories, then you already know I’m in Japan for a week for vacation and then heading to Hong Kong for a week before going home.

I’m writing this on Thursday night (Japan time) so I’ve just gone through a long travel day plus time change and I’m trying to stay awake until 10pm right now before passing out. So I’m using this introductory travel diary post to recap my travel day.

A car service picked me and my family up at 7am eastern time on Wednesday. Since the flight is about 13 hours, we decided to splurge and fly business class. My first time in first/business first class! Since we are United Club members and flying first we were able to go to the Polaris lounge while we waited for our flight. There I had the fanciest airport breakfast ever.

We boarded the flight and I had my own little cubicle area. The seats lean back and another piece can go up sort of like an electronic recliner so you can put your legs up. The food is definitely better in business first, but it’s still airplane food so it’s nothing super tasty. The best part was the ice cream sundae. I ate parts of all the meals, read and finished The Innocents (review of it coming today!), watched both The Avengers: Infinity War and Sherlock Gnomes, listened to music, and tried to sleep. I knew that I would arrive in Japan in the middle of the day Thursday so I had to try to sleep. I probably slept for only 2 hours and only 1 of those hours was a solid sleep.

We finally landed around 1pm local time on Thursday and after getting through customs and getting our luggage we had to take an airport bus to Shinjuku, the area of Tokyo we’re staying in. The ride is about an hour long and I was not having it. At the point, I was really tired, had a headache, and it was really humid out. What made matters worse is the bus ride made me so sick! The first part of the bus ride was fine, once it cooled down – it was really hot inside. I fell asleep for a little bit. Then once we got in to the city there was so much stop & go traffic and for anyone who knows me, I get really carsick in stop and go traffic. We finally made it to the hotel and I felt a lot better after a visit to the lobby bathroom.

The view from my room is really nice and I’m looking forward to exploring the city and Japan!

We went for a short walk around the area before dinner. It was humid out but bearable, at least for 6pm. We ate dinner at the Japanese restaurant at the hotel, which I will recap in a food post soon! Also before going to dinner I wanted to change, but I also was too tired to iron something to wear since most of my clothes got wrinkled in the suitcase. So I kept the same elephant tee I had on, but put on a black skort, changed out of my sneakers, and put my hair up. Touched up with some powder and I looked alive again! Talk about a day to night look!

That takes us to now. Came back to my room after trying not to fall asleep at dinner. Now keeping myself up by writing up this post and my book review before passing out. I don’t want to go to bed before 10 and end up waking up at 5! This 13 hour time difference and no real sleep since Tuesday night is rough!

When this post goes live, I’m supposed to be in Kyoto for the day/night. Check back in later today for my book review blog post and tomorrow I will talk about my first full day in Tokyo!