Japan Trip 2009 - Day 1

The first time to Japan. You can imagine how excited we were.

The very first day was a transport day. We had to arrive the first destination before 2100, because we reserved a hotel at our first destination and had to check in before that time. It was a hurry day as we could not manage transportation precisely, you know, especially the traveling time and schedule, and something unexpected. Lucky that the good thing is transportation schedule is pretty good in Japan. As planned, there are plan A, B, C when we could not make one happen. Anyway, everything should be planned well before execution.

We took an early flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo Narita Airport. Actually, it was a 0930 flight. There are 2 airports in Tokyo. Narita is the one to handle 90% or above of international flights. Time difference between Hong Kong and Japan is just an hour. Thus, no jet lag this time. We landed before 1435 Japan time, as planned. It was planned to catch Narita Express to Tokyo train station and catch another bullet train (Shinkansen 新幹線) to Sendai 仙台, the first destination.

However, we got a situation at Tokyo. I took Hong Kong SAR passport. There were no problem for me to get into Japan. My gal, holding Malaysia passport. From website and a travel agent friend, claimed that there were no need to apply VISA for Malaysian passport holder. The fact is, Japan custom would cut in and prevent you entering Japan if a Malaysian were without VISA. So, my gal had to apply at that time, which took around 30 minutes. Thus, we were 30 minutes behind schedule. As planned, we knew that there were trains in another 30 minutes. And, no problem, the hotel check in time was planned to be padded with buffers.

Then we went straight to the train ticket office. Lucky that there were not much people queuing up. Almost all of them are Hong Kong people. I heard some of them were planning to buy train tickets, but anyway, I were in a hurry. I took out my JR East Pass receipt (bought in Hong Kong to save time) to exchange my real JR East Pass, and booked seats for NEX (Narita Express) to Tokyo and Bullet Train from Tokyo to Sendai. Surprisingly, the ticket officer's English is so fluent. Easy for us to communicate with. Then we got the tickets and went straight away to catch the train.

It took us almost an hour to Tokyo Train Station. Then we hurry to catch the bullet train. The Tokyo Train Station is real huge. It is a terminus for almost all kind of trains, including normal JR trains, underground, bullet trains, etc... It was hard for us to figure out the way to get on bullet train. Lucky that most of the sign boards are with chinese words. So we followed the sign boards to get on the platform. And wait for the train to Sendai.

The platform is hanging with lots of digital sign boards that display so much train information for passengers. It is the same as what I have seen in Japanese cartoons. Information are very well-organized. You can find the correct queue for the coming trains, the platform for your transit, the ETA and ETD time, route, and number of cars...etc

Our bullet train was called Hayate, in Japanese is "Fast as Wind". A very good name. The train is pretty nice. Seats are comfortable. There were so much businessmen there. They brought along with dinner boxes and drinks on board. When sited properly, they started eating. Then took nap until reaching the stations that they were going to take off. Seems like routine habit. Busy guys living in this busy country. A pretty interesting scene for us. The train took us almost 2 hours to reach Sendai. We still got plenty of time to locate our hotel.

With the printed out Google map, we took almost 20 minutes to locate the hotel. We did not understand the streets arrangement. We knew there should be order for the arrangement but still could not figure it out. We, at last, asked a high school girl where the hotel is. She is very helpful. We communicated in simple Japanese. Lucky that we could understand.

The hotel is quite a good one. Simple, nice, clean and tidy. Good for business trip people. Sendai is one of the biggest city in the North East region of Japan. So there are so much business men and women, and would stay for few days. Such kind of hotels are in good demand.

After checking in, it was time for dinner. We walked around the streets to find something to eat. We decided to walk in a small Japanese restaurant and tried Japanese food. The shop is in a basement of a commercial building, with nice decoration. We ordered 2 sets dinner and were tasting good. We were so full after the meal and went back to hotel. Rest more for the next day's visits.