A Little Taste Of My First Day In Japan

Konbanwa minna-san! Yes, I did just say 'good evening, everyone" in Japanese. Deal with it. I'm in Japan now, and I am allowed to partake in the occasional usage of the Japanese language on my blog so *blows raspberries*. I apologise if there are any typos, spelling or grammar mistakes, but I'm running on three hours sleep because no matter how much I try, I just cannot sleep on planes. It never works! We had a red-eye flight that departed at 12:15am, and took almost 10 hours, so most of my time was spent with me tossing and turning, and then catching up on the latest episodes of Gotham and Brooklyn Nine Nine, as well as working my way through Parks and Recreations.

Eventually, after what felt like years, the plane landed, and we dragged ourselves through customs and baggage claims, which took forever. And then we had to lug everything over to Terminal 2, to the basement floor so that we could exchange our Japan Rail Pass Forms for the passes themselves. And then we had to get Suica Cards so that we could travel on the subway. Fast forward an hour later we were sweaty, hungry and tired as hell, walking almost a quarter of an hour to our AirBNB home in Katsushika. 

An hour later, we were settled in, freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes. We went for a walk about town, stopping by the bakery in front of our place for a bite to eat. We also stopped by Cozy Corner near the subway station to pick up a couple of desserts, and I picked up a cream puff, which definitely hit the spot. We then hit up the local supermarket to stock up on some milk for hot beverages, and some ready-made meals, such as tamagoyaki nigiri and a seaweed onigiri for me to nom on tomorrow while we're on the go.

We had an early dinner at Yoshinoya, a popular gyudon chain in Japan. I had the mixed vegetable on rice bowl, which was basic but delicious at $5. Sean ended up getting a massive meal, along with a 500ml bottle of beer for almost $12 - and he wasn't expecting the beer to be that big when the chef brought it to the table.

Despite the lack of sleep and a very long and tiring 24+ hours, Sean is having the time of his life here and has said "Japan is so cute!" and "I want to live here!" at least a few times since arrival. He's really excited about going overseas for the first time ever, and I can tell that he's been bitten by the travel bug. I envy him, he's seeing Japan for the first time, whereas it feels like I'm at home, which is weird. I've forgotten a lot of hiragana and katakana since my last visit, so reading menus and signs has been a little difficult today, but thankfully I can still remember how to get by in a conversation.

Our host came by just a little while ago to chat with us for a bit, and then she said that I was cute! Cute, in all my sleepy, makeup-free, messy-haired glory! *gasp!*

However, the best ending to this day was finding out that the toilet seat was heated, obviously. Nothing beats a nice warm seat for your butt to rest on while doing some business.

I'm gonna go and sleep for the next 10 hours. Oyasuminasai!